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GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

IN OLD TESTAMENT 

MASTERPIECES 



BY 



LAURA H. WILD 

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL HISTORY AND LITERATURE 
IN LAKE ERIE COLLEGE 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY LAURA H. WILD 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

915. 1 




3Tfce at&ctifcum ^rcsssf 



GINN AND COMPANY 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • 


• PRO- 
U.S.A. 




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MAR 


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© 


CIA391997 



TO 
THE FRIEND 

WHOSE COUNSEL AND ENCOURAGEMENT 
HAVE BEEN THE CONSTANT INSPIRATION OF MY WORK 



PREFACE 

It is not the purpose of this book to teach the geography, 
history, or nature study of Palestine in detail, but rather to 
give illustrations of how Old Testament literature is inter- 
preted through the geography, history, botany, and zoology 
of the land in which it was written. Every one should 
know something of these subjects. There is no better 
way to impress these great facts upon our minds than to 
connect them with the poetic outbursts they have inspired 
in great authors, and nowhere did nature seem to have a 
more impressive effect upon the mind of man than in 
Palestine, becoming a necessary part of the expression of 
his soul. We lost all that during the Middle Ages. Not 
until the time of Wordsworth and his contemporaries did 
the great nature poets begin to appear in the West. To-day 
in our public schools we are trying to teach our youth to 
come close to the very heart of life by drawing close to 
nature. It is fitting, then, that we should go back to the 
great nature poets of Hebrew literature to help us on our 
way, for " true poetry has always come back to the realities 
of Nature and life," and some of the world's greatest 
masterpieces are to be found in the Old Testament. We 
are beginning to show appreciation of this fact by intro- 
ducing the Bible as literature into many of our schools, 1 but 

1 See recommendation of the Committee on College Requirements ; 
also the North Dakota Plan, Biblical World, June, 191 3, and " Academic 

[v] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

a real interpretation of these masterpieces is utterly impos- 
sible without some knowledge of the land itself — without, 
figuratively speaking, breathing the same atmosphere which 
inspired the author. The two things, then, work together : 
a knowledge of the nature of the land interprets the liter- 
ature, and the literature interprets our knowledge of all 
nature and life. 

The selections included in this little book are illustrative 
of some of the main geographical features of Palestine which 
affected the life of the people so strongly. Most of them 
are great poems or stories depicting historical events. They 
introduce some of the forms of literature peculiar to the 
Hebrews and of which their great writers were such uncon- 
scious masters. They also touch upon botany and zoology, 
the nature study with which these . Hebrew poets were 
saturated and which reveals the everyday life of the people. 

The text quoted unless otherwise indicated is the Amer- 
ican Revised Version. The special translations inserted are 
taken from many scholars. They are not meant as a substi- 
tute for our familiar versions, but rather to illumine the 
passages by looking at the original Hebrew in the light 
of the gifted scholarship of our day. Any version — the 
King James, the Revised, the Douay, or the Jewish trans- 
lation of the Hebrew Scriptures — will serve for the use 
of the students. 

Credit for Bible Study," The Independent, March 9, 1914; also a state- 
ment of the Colorado Plan, the Gary Plan, the New York City Plan, the 
Pennsylvania Plan, the Pittsburg Plan, the Australian Plan, and the Sas- 
katchewan Plan in the Twentieth Century Quarterly, September, 1914. 
This Quarterly is edited by Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, Washington, D.C. See 
also " The Biblical Knowledge of High School Students," Religious 
Education, August, 191 4. 

[vi] 



PREFACE 

I am indebted to Professor Irving F. Wood of Smith 
College, Miss Harriet L. Keeler, formerly of the Cleveland 
public schools, and Dr. Washington Gladden for their 
kindness in reading the manuscript and encouraging its 
publication ; also to Dr. Margaret L. Bailey of Smith 
College for assistance in proofreading. 

Lake Erie College LAURA H. WILD 

Painesville, Ohio 



[vii] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PART I. THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES .... i 
PART II. OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES ... 21 

SELECTION 

I. The Coast 21 

Isa. xvii, 12-14 

II. The Roads 25 

The Story of Joseph and his Brethren 25 

Gen. xxxvii 

III. The Hills 32 

Ps. xxiv, 7-10 (xxiii, 7-10, Douay); Ps. cxxi (cxx, Douay); 
Ps. cxxv, 1, 2 (cxxiv, 1, 2, Douay); Gen. xxii, 1-18; 
Isa. xxx, 15-17 ; Isa. xxxi, 1, 3-5 

Abraham on Mount Moriah 38 

Gen. xxii, 1-18 
Isaiah's Warning 41 

Isa. xxx, 15-17; Isa. xxxi, 1, 3-5 

IV. The Attractions of the Plain 46 

Samson and the Wheat Fields 46 

Judges xv, 4-17 
The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley . 52 
Song of Songs ii, 1 (Canticle of Canticles ii, 1, Douay) 

V. The River Kishon and Deborah's Song 55 

Judges v 

VI. Mount Carmel and Elijah the Tishbite 66 

1 Kings xviii, 16-40 (3 Kings xviii, 16-40, Douay) 

[ix] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

SELECTION PAGE 

VII. Mount Carmel and the Rains 75 

1 Kings xvii, 1-7 (3 Kings xvii, 1-7, Douay); 1 Kings 
xviii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 41-46 (3 Kings xviii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 41- 
46, Douay) 

VIII. The Thunderstorm Psalm 80 

Ps. xxix (xxviii, Douay) 

IX. Mount Hermon, the Land of Snow 84 

Prov. xxv, 13 ; Hos. xiii, 3 ; Hos. vi, 4 ; Hos. xiv, 6 

X. The Smell of Lebanon . 87 

Hos. xiv, 4-7 

XL Naaman's Scorn of the Jordan 92 

2 Kings v, i-i9a (4 Kings v, i-i9a, Douay) 

XII. The Bulls of Bashan and the Balm of Gilead . . 97 
Ps. xxii, 12 (xxi, 13, Douay); Deut. xxxii, 9-15; Jer. 1, 
17-19; Gen. xxxvii, 25; Gen. xliii, 1 1 ; Jer. viii, 18-22 

XIII. The Caves 104 

Gen. xix, 30; Obad. 3, 4, 10-15 (Abdias 3, 4, 10-15, 
Douay); 1 Sam. xxiv (1 Kings xxiv, Douay); 1 Sam. 
xiii, 5-7, 19 to xiv, 23 (1 Kings xiii, 5-7, 19 to xiv, 23, 
Douay); 1 Sam. xxii, 1,2(1 Kings xxii, 1, 2, Douay); 
1 Sam. xxviii, 3-25 (1 Kings xxviii, 3-25, Douay); 
Amos ix, 1 b-3 a 

XIV. The Desert 119 

Ps. ciii, 15, 16 (cii, 15, 16, Douay); Ps. lxiii, 1 (lxii, 2, 
3, Douay); Ps. xiii, 1, 2 (xli, 2, 3, Douay); Ps. cvii, 
4 ff. (cvi, 4 ff., Douay); Ps. cxliii, 6-8 (cxlii, 6-8, 
Douay); Isa. xxxii, 1, 2; Isa.lv; Isa. xl 

XV. The Land and the People 129 

Ps. civ (ciii, Douay); Deut. viii, 7-10 ; Exod. xxxiv, 
22, 26; Judges vi, 11, 12; and selections from the 
Prophets and from Job 

XVI. The Poem of the Farmer 141 

Isa. xxviii, 23-29 



CONTENTS 

SELECTION PAGE 

XVII. The Fields of Bethlehem and the Story of Ruth 145 
The Book of Ruth 

XVIII. The Song of the Vineyard 155 

Isa. v, 1-7 

XIX. The Shepherd Psalm 161 

Ps. xxiii (xxii, Douay) 

INDEX OF BIBLE REFERENCES 171 

GENERAL INDEX 175 



Xi] 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



JOSEPH'S WELL 2.6 ^""^ 

THE GREAT HIGH PLACE AT PETRA 36 \f 

PLOWING IN THE FIELDS OF SHARON 46*^ 

THE RIVER KISHON AND THE OLD BATTLEGROUND ... 54 [. 

MOUNT CARMEL AND THE PLAIN OF ACRE 74 

THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT HERMON 84 : 

THE WILDERNESS SOUTH OF THE DEAD SEA 1 1 8 

PALESTINIAN AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS I40 



GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

IN OLD TESTAMENT 

MASTERPIECES 

PART I 

THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

One of the greatest educators of our country, the man 
who has done more than any other to call our attention 
to the scientific study of the needs of our youth, calls the 
Bible our " pedagogical masterpiece." 1 All teachers who 
are familiar with the book know this to be true, that from 
a teacher's standpoint, that of the art of presenting ma- 
terial, it is most illuminating. They know also that mod- 
ern scholarship has thrown such a flood of light upon 
Hebrew literature that the Old Testament especially is 
rightfully regarded as containing some of the finest ex- 
amples of story, poetry, and oratory that the world pos- 
sesses. No less a writer than Mr. Edmund Gosse says 
that when young men come to him for advice in the 
formation of style he has no counsel for them except to 
read aloud as often as possible portions of the Bible. No 
less a teacher than one of our professors of English in 

1 President G. Stanley Hall. 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Yale University in trying to show his students how to write 
an essay or prepare a speech or tell a story sends them 
to the Scriptures to find out how, and points to the many 
noted men of letters who have "learned their trade in 
great part from the English Bible." He says their case 
differs only in degree from that of the plain people, and 
"since the easiest of books to have at hand has been found 
in the experience of so many and so different men the 
best of models for learning how to write, it cannot be set 
aside without folly." And one of the professors of Eng- 
lish in Harvard University, in speaking of the Old Testa- 
ment, says " it has preserved for us the history, the poetry, 
the wisdom, the religious ideals and national hopes of a 
people whose individuality and tenacity of thought are 
perhaps the strongest known in history " ; and he adds 
that its poetry is " marked by a singular concreteness and 
objectivity both of idea and of idiom, and by a freedom 
of form otherwise unknown in English." 

Since these statements concerning the value of the Bible 
as a textbook are undoubtedly not in the least exaggerated, 
it seems unpardonable to debar our children from its ac- 
quaintance as great literature. Furthermore, these recent 
years have revolutionized the teaching of geography, so 
that this subject is now considered quite worthy of place 
in our universities as well as in our secondary schools, so 
much has it to do with the development of life, both in 
the past and in the present. Our great geographers have 
been busy turning the light of their particular science upon 
every country of the earth, and they have not omitted the 
little territory of Palestine. The most recent geographical 
investigations show this tiny strip of land to be one of the 

[2] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

most remarkable portions of the earth's surface, a repre- 
sentation in miniature of what has been spread over whole 
continents elsewhere. But the land and the literature of 
the land are inextricably bound together. It is my purpose 
to show that we are depriving our children of one of the 
greatest source books of education when we cut them off 
from an acquaintance with the land of Palestine and the 
literature of the Old Testament, and that a most legiti- 
mate aid to the study of literature and geography in general 
is the study of some of the great Old Testament master- 
pieces against the geographical background which forms 
their setting. 

From the broader standpoint we are only beginning to 
appreciate fully the value and interest of this branch of 
knowledge. The ancients understood the necessity of a 
crude geography in order to conduct their trade and make 
the discoveries which the more adventurous among them 
dared to undertake ; and though much of it was guesswork, 
which has had to be revised with the more accurate knowl- 
edge of the world, their geographical guesses led to great 
things — the discovery of continents, the migration of races, 
the establishment of great empires, the onward progress 
of civilization. The geography of to-day is not guesswork 
because there is now very little of the earth's surface that 
is unexplored, and because with the advance of science 
we have so much more accurate means of drawing maps 
and picturing the relative importance of various localities. 
But it is nevertheless of great interest to us to read of the 
geographical guess of Columbus, who stumbled on America 
when he thought he was going to find India, or to discover 
in the country just east of the Dead Sea a mosaic map of 

[3] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

the Eastern world laid out in the ground hundreds of years 
ago. 1 This is the oldest known map in the world. It is 
made of squares of stone of various colors — red, yellow, 
blue, black, and white — and represents Palestine, the Nile 
Valley, and the surrounding countries. Bridges, fish, beasts, 
and men, as well as mountains, rivers, and cities, are de- 
picted. There is not much left of the animals now but 
legs and tails. However, an antelope may be seen intact, 
as well as palm trees in the hot valleys. This proves that 
the ancient geographers felt, as we do, that we should 
have pictures in our minds not only of the topography of a 
land (where the water ends and the plains and mountains 
begin), and of the distance between cities, but also of the 
things that live there, the kind of animals and plants as 
well as men. 

Modern geography, however, goes much further than 
this. It asks " why " of everything it places upon the map. 
Why, for example, did the great steel company choose to 
place its city at the precise spot which is called Gary, 
Indiana ? Why do the great trunk lines of our continent 
all focus at Chicago ? Why is the city of Buenos Aires 
growing so rapidly and magnificently ? Why are many 
ruins of ancient buildings found on the Upper Nile and 
comparatively few in the Delta ? Why has the little country 
of Palestine played so important a part in the development 
of the religious life of the world ? Many of these " whys " 
have to do with the development of commerce, and as this 
is a commercial age, we are having commercial geography 
introduced very generally into our schools. But modern ge- 
ography is by no means wholly utilitarian, it is more of a 

1 Ellsworth Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation, pp. 205 ff. 

[4] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

science than that would signify. We want to know the 
answers to these questions because they are vitally con- 
nected with our understanding of history, the story of the 
life of the world in the past as well as in the present day. 
Palestine is a wonderful country to study from the 
modern geographical standpoint. There are several reasons 
for this. In the first place, it is a very small country, only 
about one hundred and fifty miles north and south by one 
hundred east and west if we include the plateau east of the 
Jordan, which properly belongs to its history. This is about 
the size of our little states of Vermont or New Jersey, and 
yet within that small territory we have the most varied 
scenery and the most varied climate in the world. Think 
of starting on a journey across the state of Vermont some 
day and on the Lake Champlain side looking out upon a 
plain covered with palm trees, apricots and figs, oranges 
and peaches, and fields of flowers, with the temperature of 
southern France ; then climbing low rounded hills, dipping 
down into a valley and ascending a high mountain, three 
thousand feet above the level of the sea, where the natives 
dress in sheepskin and live in warm stone huts ; then mak- 
ing a quick, sharp dip down into a torridly hot valley, with 
the thermometer in May standing from 104 to 1 14 Fah- 
renheit, where the thinnest of clothes only are endurable ; 
then rising again to the plateau beyond, where cool breezes 
and heavy dews make blankets at night desirable. This 
would be like crossing from the Mediterranean Sea near 
Joppa over the foothills and up Mount Zion, down into 
the Jordan Valley and up again to the Plateau of Moab. 
Or if one stood upon Mount Carmel, the one conspicuous 
promontory which juts out a little north of the middle of 

[5] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

the coast line, and looked northeast, there would be the 
snow-capped Mount Hermon, the Pike's Peak of Pales- 
tine, standing nine thousand feet above the sea, with the 
hills of Galilee beneath, the grainfields of the Valley of 
Jezreel to the east, and, swinging around to the south, the 
beautiful fertile Plain of Sharon lying at one's feet dotted 
with fruit trees and with red anemones which sprinkle the 
landscape with color. California, as one travels from Los 
Angeles to Sacramento and from the Pacific Coast to the 
Sierras, is said to be more like Palestine than any other 
country in the world, so far as the differences in climate and 
landscape are concerned; 1 but California covers a very 
much larger territory, — more than ten times as large, 2 — 
and so Palestine has the distinction of giving us the most 
compressed and kaleidoscopic view of the landscapes and 
climates which the world contains. 

The second reason why Palestine is a remarkable coun- 
try to study is from the geological standpoint. Geology is 
more or less involved in geography, just as botany and 
zoology are. The land we live upon — the soil, the rocks, 
the mountains and valleys — has a history. Some por- 
tions of land are much older than others and show the 
effects of age and can tell tales that younger places know 
nothing about. Now Palestine can tell a very old story of 
the earth's appearance above the sea some thirty thousand 
years ago 8 and of the gradual changes that took place until 

1 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation. 

2 California has an area of 158,000 square miles, and Greater Palestine 
of only 1 2,000. Thus California is fully thirteen times as large as Palestine. 

8 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation, p. 307. This is the 
average of the various estimates of geologists concerning the lapse of 
time since the close of the last glacial period in Palestine. 

[6] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

it was fit for men to live upon some five or six thousand 
years ago — of great glaciers that rubbed and scratched 
and melted, of mighty volcanic eruptions that tore the rocks 
up by the roots, and of the folding of the earth's crust into 
hills and valleys, forming watersheds and river basins and 
lakes and seas, leaving mountains and plateaus high and dry, 
and causing rich, fertile soil to be washed down upon the 
plains. Palestine is a wonderful country geologically for 
three reasons ; first, because it contains within such a 
small area almost all the different kinds of formations 
which the earth assumes — plain, plateau, sand hill, desert 
and snow-clad peaks, river valley and mountain gorge, 
marshes, bodies of fresh water and salt water, hot springs 
and sulphur springs, steep escarpments and howling wilder- 
ness, caves for robbers, pillars of salt, volcanic craters, 
chalk, limestone, sandstone, a forbidding coast line, and 
one semblance of a harbor. What greater variety could 
one ask for ? Moreover, while the top layers of sandstone, 
limestone, and chalk are geologically young, there are very 
ancient granite rocks near at hand, and it was one of the 
very first portions of the earth's surface to get settled into 
shape fit for man and beast. 1 It has, therefore, a longer 
story to tell than most lands. 

In the third place, it contains the most wonderful val- 
ley known anywhere on the earth's surface, a valley which 
starts up in the Lebanon Mountains with the sources of the 
Jordan River, widening out into marshes with a tiny lake 
called Lake Huleh, and then a little farther down forming 

1 Townsend MacCoun, The Holy Land in Geography and History ; 
Canon Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; C. F. Kent, Biblical Geog- 
raphy and History ; Elihu Grant, The Peasantry of Palestine. 

[7] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

the harp-shaped Sea of Galilee with its clear, blue, fresh 
water. The outlet of the Sea of Galilee is the River 
Jordan, which winds down to the Dead Sea, " a sparkling 
serpent writhing in a barren desert, with only here and 
there an oasis of deepest green." The distance the Jordan 
traverses from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea is only 
about sixty miles in an air line, but the river is so wind- 
ing that its course measures two hundred miles. The Sea 
of Galilee at its lower end sinks down very rapidly. Where 
the Jordan River finds its exit its channel is six hundred 
and fifty feet below the level of the ocean, and by the time 
it reaches the Dead Sea the gorge is twelve hundred and 
seventy-eight feet below sea level. When one finds land 
below sea level anywhere, it is a phenomenon to be spe- 
cially noted, but almost thirteen hundred feet below is 
heard of only in the little country of Palestine. " No other 
part of the earth's land surface sinks much over three 
hundred feet below the level of the sea ; there may be 
something on the surface of another planet to match the 
Jordan Valley — there is nothing on this." 1 The gorge 
is especially peculiar ; geologists think it is not due to 
the rift cut deep in the rock by the flowing stream, as most 
valleys are made, but to the original folding of the earth's 
crust, which left this deep trench to be filled in by the 
water washing down from above. 2 Moreover the Dead 
Sea, which is the terminus of this valley, has no outlet ; 
it receives all the waters from the Jordan and the smaller 
streams on the east which flow into it, but there is no 
stream which flows out. It never gets filled up, however, 

1 George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 

2 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation. 

[8] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

and never overflows, because the heat is so intense down 
in that torrid valley that the water evaporates very rapidly. 
This causes the atmosphere to be exceedingly moist and 
all the more unbearable in the hot season. 1 It also causes 
all the mineral elements to be deposited in the sea ; not 
any are carried off, so that it has become the saltiest body 
of water known, the water containing twenty-five per cent 
of salts. No living thing can exist in it — all fish die within 
a few feet of shore, all palm trees and plants on the borders, 
which sometimes become inundated, wither up and perish. 
If a man tries to swim, as soon as he has reached a depth 
up to his armpits he is lifted off his feet " and vainly wig- 
gles his toes in an attempt to touch bottom." If the wind 
blows, the heavy water very slowly rises into waves, but 
finally breaks with tremendous force dangerous to boats and 
men. 2 But because of its peculiarities this body of water 
produces some of the most beautiful color effects known. 3 
And so, geologically, Palestine is a most interesting coun- 
try with which to become acquainted. But there is still 
another reason why every student should mark Palestine 
in red as one of the spots on the globe that he knows 
about ; and that is because it contains a greater variety of 
plants and animals than any other country of its size in 
the world. 3 How many know that the cyclamen which 
you buy at the greenhouse in winter, with its beautiful 

1 "Owing to the proximity of the desert and the intense heat — the 
temperature rising in summer as high as n8° — it is the scene of a stu- 
pendous process of evaporation. It is computed that between six and 
eight million tons of water rise in vapor from this great natural caldron 
each day." — Kent, Biblical Geography and History. 

2 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation. 

3 Kent, Biblical Geography and History. 

[9] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

rose-colored blossoms, is a native of Palestine ? How many 
have supposed that the common old-fashioned hollyhock 
which grows in your grandmother's garden in the country 
received its name from the holy-hocys of the Holy Land 
brought back to England by the Crusaders ? * Did you 
know also that our delicate maidenhair fern could be seen 
in some of the caves over there, as well as the lilies and 
the mustard spoken of in the Gospels, and crocuses and 
narcissi, bachelor's-buttons and wild mignonette, besides gor- 
geous fields of red anemone, the wild rose, and " an endless 
variety of orchids "? 2 Around the marshes of Lake Huleh 
are found acres of the papyrus reed, some of it growing 
sixteen feet high. This is the plant that used to grow in 
such profusion in Egypt and from which the first paper 
was made by cutting it into strips and pasting them to- 
gether. It took the place of the expensive sheepskin for 
writing purposes, and many of our old manuscripts were 
written on this kind of paper. But now this reed is wholly 
extinct in Egypt and, except in Palestine, is not found 
again until one reaches Assyria or India. 3 

If you should visit the Semitic Museum at Harvard 
University, you would find a collection of Palestinian birds, 
some of them looking much like our own. You would 
recognize the raven, of which there are no less than seven 
kinds in Palestine. The Palestinian crow has a gray body 
and black wings. There are quail in the grass, as well as 

1 A. Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine. 

2 Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine ; Grant, The Peasantry 
of Palestine ; Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; W. M. Thomson, 
The Land and the Book. 

8 Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; Grant, The Peasantry of 
Palestine. 

[IO] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

partridges in the hills and owls in the ruins. There is 
the white stork with black wings, red bill, and red legs, 
and there are many long-legged water birds. Swallows, 
goldfinches, doves, white sparrows, and even robin red- 
breasts, are among the smaller birds. But there are some 
birds in the regions near the Dead Sea not found else- 
where in any part of the world. 1 In Palestine almost 
every kind of creature seems to flourish, from sheep and 
dogs and camels to bears, hyenas, wolves, and jackals, and 
from lizards and snakes to bats and most enormous grass- 
hoppers. The remarkable thing about the flora and fauna 
of Palestine is not the number of species but the fact 
that ordinarily these plants and animals are found in 
such widely separated places. Serpents and lizards are 
found in hot countries, bears and deer in cold ; maidenhair 
ferns are found in Vermont and Canada, and cyclamen 
nowhere in America but in hothouses. Yet here in Pal- 
estine they are all together. It is the native habitat of palm 
trees and fir trees, olives and apricots, figs and grapes. 
The reason for it of course is that there is such a variety 
of climate in this little land, from the torrid Jordan Valley 
to the cold, snow-clad mountains of Lebanon. There is a 
puzzle in the Book of Samuel. 2 I wonder if you can tell 
the answer. How could a boy named Benaiah find a lion 
(whose habitat is a torrid jungle) in a cave where there was 
snow ? The answer would be hard to find in America but 
very simple in Palestine years ago, before lions were ex- 
tinct. The lion lived in the Jordan Valley and by mistake 

1 Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; Grant, The Peasantry of 
Palestine. 

2 2 Sam. xxiii, 20. 

["] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

one hot day wandered up the west bank only five or six 
miles into a cave in the mountains of Judea about three 
thousand feet above his home. 1 

But there' is yet another reason why these plants and 
animals are interesting. They represent the flora and fauna 
of different continents — of Asia and Africa and Europe. 
Ordinarily in studying geography you classify these liv- 
ing things separately according to continents, but here 
they are together. It is because Palestine is a bridge 
between these continents, a meeting place, a point of 
adventure from north to south and from east to west, and 
also because it is such a narrow bridge, with the hot desert 
on one side and the cool Mediterranean Sea on the other. 2 
We shall find later that it has been a bridge and meet- 
ing place for human beings of various continents and 
races, 1 as well as for plants and animals, but just now we 
will confine ourselves to this third reason for including 
Palestine in our study of geography : namely, that it has 
the most remarkable variety of flora and fauna of any 
known country. 2 

The fourth reason is the historical. Of course when we 
speak of history we mean the story of the human race. 
We have been speaking of the story of the earth, its rocks, 
its plants, its animals. That is all history in one sense, 
the history of the earth, and goes back thousands of years 
before the history of man ever began at all. Man, in- 
deed, is the highest animal and caps the story of the 
development of the earth. But in the sense in which it 

1 Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 

2 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation ; Standard Bible Dic- 
tionary, art. "Animals." 

[12] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

is ordinarily used, history means the story of the life of men 
on earth. And Palestine is a remarkable country because of 
its bearings upon the history of men. In the first place it 
is situated very near what is supposed to be " the cradle of 
the human race ' n — the place where the land first became 
fit for men to live, where they first appeared on the earth 
and gradually developed into tribes and races. Palestine is 
not the birthplace of the first man, but it is near enough to 
the earliest developments of mankind to take us away back 
to primitive society and conditions and show us how those 
early nomads lived — how they began to settle down and 
become agriculturists and cease to wander about for their 
living, how commerce first began to develop and merchant 
vessels to be launched upon the sea by the Phoenicians 
and great overland roads to be built between cities. More- 
over, it lies upon the direct path between the oldest civi- 
lizations of the world, Babylonia and Egypt, with their 
important cities, and it was across this bridge, or pathway, 
that men passed to and fro and exchanged ideas in the 
earliest days of history. The oldest road in the world runs 
through Palestine — the ancient caravan route from Egypt 
up the coast and across the Plain of Esdraelon at Dothan, 
then over the Jordan Valley just north of the Sea of Gal- 
ilee and on to Damascus and the East. Along that road 
came the traders to whom Joseph was sold by his brethren 
to be taken down into Egypt as a slave, and along that 
road the caravans passing to and fro brought the news 
of the world to this little isolated country of Hebrews. 

1 See George A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, pp. 13 ff., for a 
brief resume of the theories concerning the origin of the human race 
and of the early branch known as the Semitic race. 

[13] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Doubtless this was why the prophets were so well in- 
formed concerning the world's affairs of their day. 

Palestine to-day retains more of the primitive setting of 
society than almost any other country, because customs 
have changed so very little there. 1 For centuries the 
world's attention has been on other spots of the globe, so 
far as the progress of civilization is concerned. New con- 
tinents have been discovered with much more promise. 
Men's minds and hearts have been full of great adven- 
tures westward and northward over Europe and America, 
and latterly to the great unknown parts of the older conti- 
nents, Africa and Asia. They have left Palestine practi- 
cally to her own devices, and for various reasons she has 
until very recently stood still, so far as changing her cus- 
toms of life is concerned. So if one wants to see with his 
own eyes illustrations of some of the stories in the Arabian 
Nights, like "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," the borders 
of Arabia over on the eastern side of the Jordan River, in 
Moab and Hauran and Edom, are good places to visit, 
where the roaming Bedouins live in tents and wander 
from place to place for pasture and where there are 
underground caves for robbers, much as in olden days. 
Or let him read the true modern story of Sit-Ikwitha, 
"The Lady of her Brethren," whose wealth and power 
still sways the Lydda district. 2 If one becomes acquainted 
with the real life of the people off from the regular lines 
of tourist travel, he may see Abraham with his flocks by a 
well settling a dispute over the water rights, or Ruth 

1 P. J. Baldensperger, The Immovable East ; Goodrich-Freer, Things 
Seen in Palestine. 

2 Baldensperger, The Immovable East, p. 197. 

[14] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

gleaning in the field of Boaz. They still plow with a 
stick over there, so that it is dangerous to look back in- 
stead of keeping one's eyes on the plow, and their clan- 
nish spirit and family feuds are much like the tales of the 
Book of Judges. 1 The actual wells and cisterns and thresh- 
ing floors of ancient days may be seen. There is an aque- 
duct near Jerusalem with an inscription on it written by 
King Hezekiah about 700 B.C. The ancient pillars of the 
city of Samaria, that city of " glorious beauty which is at 
the head of the fat valley," 2 loom up now in desolate 
ruins to commemorate the days of Omri and Herod, and 
remains of the luxurious baths of Roman times are also 
there. Going much farther back than this in the history 
of mankind, there are relics of the days of primitive cave 
men, with their flint implements, centuries before Jerusa- 
lem was ever known to the Hebrews. 3 

Just because Palestine forms this narrow bridge between 
two continents and the two oldest civilizations of the world, 4 
there have traveled up and down it through the centuries 
a great variety of races for various purposes — war and 
conquest, peace and trade, patriotic and religious devotion. 
Here is a list of the armies that have gone up and down, 
either to get at Egypt or Assyria or to conquer Palestine 
itself : the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the 
Ethiopians, the Hittites (the strong, virile race marching 
south from their capital in Asia Minor, where pictures of 

1 Baldensperger, The Immovable East ; Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen 
in Palestine, p. 73. 

2 Isa. xxviii, 1. 

8 H. T. Fowler, The History of the Literature of Ancient Israel, p. 2 ; 
Kent, Biblical Geography and History, p. 88. 

4 Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 

[15] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

them are found upon the rocks with toboggan caps and 
mittens), the Scythians, the Persians, the Parthians, the 
Greeks, the Romans, the Moslems, the Mongols, the 
Turks, the Crusaders, and Napoleon with his Frenchmen. 
In 1898 the German Emperor made a visit, not of war 
but of peace, and in honor of his arrival " roads were 
made, bridges built, and improvements carried out wher- 
ever his visits were looked for." x Some of the exploits of 
these armies make thrilling tales. Down in Egypt there 
has been discovered on the wall of a temple, which re- 
counts the adventures and conquests of the great King 
Thutmose III, a picture of a vessel coming home from 
Palestine with three heads of petty princes dangling from 
the prow. There is also an account of how this same 
Thutmose used to send his army up to the Plain of Es- 
draelon every year to cut the grain necessary to keep the 
horses for his many soldiers. On one of these expeditions 
the account tells us that he carried away one hundred and 
fifty thousand bushels. This was about 1500 b.c, and the 
battle field of Megiddo, the gateway to this fertile plain, 
where Thutmose fought a big battle and won a great vic- 
tory, is one of the very oldest battle fields known to history. 
The record says that at this first great conflict between 
the Egyptian and Asiatic races Thutmose had his forces 
ranged up the side of Mt. Carmel and declared that he 
would go forth at the head of his army himself, "showing 
the way by his own footsteps." 2 He carried away this time 
nine hundred and twenty-four chariots, twenty-two hundred 
and thirty-eight horses, two hundred suits of armor, and 

1 Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine, p. 211. 

2 J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 225 ff. 

[16] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

the gorgeous tent of the king of Kadesh, besides his 
household furniture and gold and silver. The great obe- 
lisk in Central Park, New York, is one of the monuments 
of this King Thutmose. In the British Museum in Lon- 
don is a tablet found in Assyria in 1839 recounting the 
exploits of their great King Sennacherib and telling how 
he took away from Palestine as spoil lt many thousands of 
captives and horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep 
without number," and how King " Hezekiah was shut up 
like a bird in a cage in the midst of Jerusalem." This 
was about 700 b.c. The story of Judas Maccabeus, "The 
Hammerer," and the guerrilla warfare against the Syrians, 
which his small band of loyal Jews carried on to victory, 1 
is as thrilling as the tale of David hiding in the caves 
with his band of four hundred discontented men, 2 the 
" Coxey's Army " of his day. Herod the Great 3 won his 
first spurs by capturing the robbers hiding under the cliffs 
east of the Sea of Galilee, lowering his soldiers in baskets 
till they were opposite the hiding men and could thrust 
them with their spears. The history of the Crusaders 4 
and the Knights Templars has been the background for 
many a romantic tale, 5 while the legend of St. George 
and the Dragon has its home in Joppa. To cap it all, 
the modern historic figure Napoleon III, 6 like Alexan- 
der the Great, 7 must try his fortune in the Holy Land. 
Up north of the Lebanons, on the cliffs of the Dog River, 

1 About 166 b.c. See i Maccabees. 

2 About 1000 b.c. See i Sam. xxii, i, 2. 

3 About 40 B.C. See Shailer Mathews, History of New Testament 
Times in Palestine. 4 About 1 100-1300 a.d. 

6 See the novels of Sir Walter Scott, Marion Crawford, and others. 
6 i860 a.d. 7 332 B.C. 

[17] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

he erased the ancient inscription of the conquests of an 
Egyptian king in order to write his own name there 
as conqueror of the East. The European or American 
traveler to-day is known in Palestine as a Frank. 

All this belongs to history, but it belongs to geography 
also, because it was the situation of the land which caused 
these nations to race back and forth over it and to quarrel 
continuously for its ownership. Of not much importance 
in itself, it was of great importance because it was the 
pathway between the continents. And one of the remark- 
able things, due very largely to the character of the coun- 
try, is that a little people in such a narrow strip of land 
could retain so strongly their individual characteristics and 
not be swallowed up by the greedy powers hovering over 
them, at the same time bequeathing to the world so rich a 
literature and so great a religion. It is doubtless due 
largely to the facts that while there was room for a caravan 
route along the coast, there were no harbors to welcome 
ships until the extreme north was gained, and that while 
this coast road made an easy path from Egypt to Assyria, 
the rugged hills of Judea held no attractions to lure the 
traveler upwards to stay and make this his home. The 
prophet pictured Jehovah as hovering over Jerusalem and 
protecting her as an eagle hovers over her nest, high upon 
the rocks, 1 and Jerusalem was one of the best protected 
fortresses known in ancient history, high up the mountain 
away from the main line of travel, and with such steep 
ascents on three sides that no army could think of enter- 
ing her walls except upon the north. The lower lands of 
Samaria and Philistia were conquered and overrun, and 

1 Isa. xxxi. 5. 

[18] 



THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES 

lost their tribes and identity, long before Judea gave in. 
Up there at the top of the earth the Hebrew prophet looked 
down on the motley array of the nations and heard the 
news of the world, but he communed with the God of 
heaven and poured out his poetical aspirations, which 
have lasted and will last as enduring possessions in the 
literature of the world. 

That literature which is embodied in the Old Testament 
is only fragments of the whole of Hebrew literature, the 
portions which escaped amid the exiles and burnings and 
manifold adventures and persecutions of the Hebrew peo- 
ple ; but it is among the richest literatures of the world 
and has affected our own English language more than 
any other literature has. 1 It is impossible to understand 
our own literature, the references and figures of speech 
in our own best writers, unless we are familiar with the 
Old Testament tales and lyrics. Moreover, it is quite im- 
possible to understand the figures of speech which the 
Hebrew poets and prophets used unless we are familiar 
with the physiography of Palestine — the winds, the fires, 
the storms, the rains, the desert and its drought, the 
mountains and their snows, the shepherd's life, the labor 
of the vinedresser, the refreshing fragrance of the balsam 
fir, and the blasting blight of a grasshopper scourge. 

The reader has doubtless been aware that at least nine 
extreme statements have been made concerning Palestine ; 
yet they are not extravagant, but true to fact. It is the 
smallest country in the world to contain so varied a climate 

1 J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chap, viii ; J. H. 
Gardiner, The Bible as English Literature ; H. H. Home, Psychologi- 
cal Principles of Education, chap, xxxiv. 

[19] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

and landscape. It contains the most marked and varied flora 
and fauna in the world. It has the most wonderful valley 
in the world. The oldest road in the world runs along its 
coast. That coast is one of the most forbidding and harbor- 
less of shores. Palestine contains one of the oldest battle- 
fields of history and one of the most impregnable natural 
fortresses of the East. It was the birthplace of one of the 
richest literatures of the world, though only fragments are 
preserved, and it is the background for the religious life of 
one half of the people of the globe. 1 This is enough to 
make one want to know the land of Palestine. 

There is, however, one more reason, more superficial, 
but a good one. These are the days when the whole earth 
is circled by travelers, and trips to the Orient are becom- 
ing more frequent. The tour to Egypt and the Near East, 
including Palestine and Damascus, is one now very com- 
monly taken. But of all lands it is impossible to appre- 
ciate Palestine by hastily studying one's Baedeker on the 
journey or by relying upon one's casual and disconnected 
knowledge of certain Bible verses. There are indeed not 
a few familiar with the Bible text who do not wish to see 
the land for fear the bloom of their ideal will be rudely 
brushed off by actual contact with the barren hillsides 
and the hot roads. But one who knows it well says, " It 
will be generally found that those who are most disen- 
chanted are those who know the country least." It will 
add immensely to the pleasure and profit of such a trip 
to have in mind before one starts some of the bearings 
of physical geography upon the life and literature of a 
most significant race. 

1 Including Mohammedans. 

[20] 



PART II 
OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

SELECTION I. THE COAST 

Isa. xvii, 12-14 

The great prophets were great poets. They were more 
than mere poets, however, for their first thought, perhaps 
their only conscious thought, was the burning message 
they had to give to the people concerning the high loyal- 
ties demanded of them — loyalty to their God and loyalty 
to their national ideals. But so much a part were they of 
nature's self that the messages they spoke sprang from 
their lips in the natural rhythm and with the musical charm 
and imaginative expression of true poetry. 

The Hebrews were a people of passionate feeling, and 
they expressed their feeling in the sounds of nature — not 
only likening the power of the Almighty to the thunder 
and lightning, but imitating its crash and roll as a storm 
broke over the hills ; not only seeing a great army travel- 
ing down the old caravan road ready to obliterate any 
enemy that stood in its way, but actually hearing its noise 
like the noise of the waves booming against the bleak 
coast. Have you ever heard the waves of the ocean boom ? 
Go out on the little island of Monhegan off the Maine coast 
and listen some day over on the east shore as the waves 

[21] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

dash up on those high rocks, or read Lowell's " Pictures 
from Appledore " and see how magnificently he uses the 
poetical figure of onomatopoeia — the likeness of thought 
and sound — in representing the beating of the waves 
against the crags of Appledore. This was precisely the 
way the Hebrew prophet described his terror when he saw 
the armies of his enemy, Assyria, approaching, for Assyria 
was Israel's most dreaded foe. The Hebrew poet heard 
this " King of Multitudes " 1 coming like the roar of the 
waves on the Mediterranean shore, that straight, bleak, in- 
hospitable coast, which warned men off with the unfriendly 
rushing and booming of the waters against the sand and 
bluffs. This forms the first strophe of this little poem. In 
the second the prophet sees the enemy chased and fleeing 
fast, as the chaff on the out-of-doors threshing floor is 
whirled off by a great gust of wind in harvest time. In the 
third strophe he sums up the fearful fright the people have 
had as if it was all a dream. As the night comes on be- 
hold the terror, but in the morning it is all over, except 
that the army has left its trail behind, where the soldiers 
have plundered the poor farms and villages on the way. 
In this little poem the writer shows a truly artistic power 
in his use of sounds expressive of feelings. It is one of the 
finest examples in all literature of such striking verbal effect. 

Ah! 
The booming of many peoples ! 
Like the booming of seas they boom ! 
And the roar of mighty nations ! 
As with the roar of waters do they roar ! 

1 This is what this King Sennacherib is called on an Assyrian bas- 
relief in the British Museum. This bas-relief represents him seated on 
a throne receiving the homage of Jewish captives. 

[22] 



THE COAST 

But Jehovah shall rebuke him, 
And he shall flee far away and be pursued 
Like chaff of the mountains before the wind, 
And as the whirling dust before the tempest. 

At eventide — lo ! terror, 

Ere morning he shall be no more. 

This shall be the lot of them that spoil us, 

And the portion of them that plunder us. 1 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For the character of the coast and the importance of the roads, see 

Smith, George Adam. Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 

chap, vii, "The Coast." A. C.Armstrong & Son, New York. $4.50. 
Hastings. Dictionary of the Bible, extra volume, art. " Roads." 

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 
Kent, C. F. Biblical Geography and History, chap, ix, " The Great 

Highways." The Pilgrim Press, Boston. $1.50. 
Huntington, Ellsworth. Palestine and its Transformation. 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $2.00. 

For the poetry of the Old Testament, see 

Gordon, A. R. The Poets of the Old Testament, chap, i, " General 
Characteristics of Hebrew Poetry." George H. Doran Company, 
New York. $1.50. 

For an example in English literature of the use of onomatopoeia, see 

Lowell, James Russell. Pictures from Appledore. 

For the character of the Assyrian army, see 

Byron, Lord. The Destruction of Sennacherib. 
Bible dictionaries and encyclopaedias, arts. " Assyrians " and 
" Sennacherib." 

For the historical setting of this passage, see 

Driver, S. R. Isaiah : his Life and Times, chap, vii, " The Great 
Deliverance." Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. 75 cents. 

1 Translation in International Critical Commentary. 

[23] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

For the religious i?ifluence of nature, see 

Van Dyke, Henry. The God of the Open Air. 
Tennyson, Alfred. " Flower in the crannied wall." 

For the influence of roads in literature, see 

Burroughs, John. The Exhilarations of the Road. 
Whitman, Walt. The Open Road. 
Grayson, David. The Friendly Road. 

Underwood & Underwood's Stereographs of Palestine are highly 
recommended for illustration of all these selections. Address Under- 
wood & Underwood, 417 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



[24] 



SELECTION II. THE ROADS 
The Story of Joseph and his Brethren 

Gen. xxxvii 

This selection illustrates again the importance of the 
old coast road, not only for armies to pass up and down 
from Assyria to Egypt but for traders who wished to go 
from Nineveh or Damascus or any of the lesser towns 
along the way down to the emporiums of the South, 
either Memphis or Thebes on the Nile, or the cities in 
the Delta before the capitals should be reached. It was 
not safe to travel alone over there in olden times any 
more than it is now. Travelers to-day go through Pales- 
tine in parties ; travelers then went through in caravans, 
picking up merchandise and news by the way. The roads 
which pass across the country are one of the most inter- 
esting features ; in ancient times they must have been 
especially so, with all the caravans of various sizes and 
sorts appearing and then disappearing again in the dis- 
tance. Egypt and Babylonia were the rich markets of the 
world in those days, and this Palestine road, which is the 
oldest road in the world, was the great trunk line between 
them. Sometimes these caravans would consist of mer- 
chants with donkeys and camels loaded down with sacks 
of grain. Sometimes more important persons would be 
journeying from one country to another with a bodyguard 

[25] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

of soldiers and a whole retinue of servants. Sometimes it 
would be a king's messenger running to carry word to his 
master of the victory or defeat of the army. Ambassadors 
to the court would pass along, too, bringing presents or 
tribute to pacify the man they feared. Then again it 
would be a procession of poor, humble people, barefoot 
peasants and a group of neighbors from some village, who 
had errands further on the way. They could easily carry 
their possessions in their girdles or in bundles swung over 
their shoulders. 1 A few of the caravans that came toiling 
along the way from Egypt to the East chose the road 
through Petra and Arabia, on the eastern side of the Jor- 
dan, but most of them took the coast road which branched 
off south of Carmel and led through the attractive and 
fertile valley of Dothan. Dothan was the place where the 
main scene of the story of Joseph is laid. The home of 
Joseph's family was Hebron, in the south of Palestine, 
but they were still nomads wandering hither and yon 
with their flocks to find pasturage. These brothers had 
wandered this time as far north as Dothan, which was a 
very fertile region, green with grass when the fields about 
Hebron, so near the desert, would be dry. The pit where 

1 This girdle is the most important item of the peasant's dress to-day. 
" Though his bodily wants may be few, he requires a large number of 
articles ever to hand, hence the girdle serves the purpose of an indis- 
pensable storeroom. Upon it are suspended chains, hooks, pouches 
and horns to hold knives, daggers, clubs, powder and shot, flint and 
steel, tinder, packneedles and thread, pipes, tobacco and cigarette 
papers, razors and combs, handkerchiefs and documents. A man with- 
out his girdle was always considered in the East to be in a position of 
inferiority; very much as an Occidental would be in his nightgown. 
The command 'gird up thy loins' meant — be ready for an emergency. 
Without his girdle a man was unprepared either for war or for journey- 
ing." — Baldensperger, The Immovable East. 

[26] 




© Underwood & Underwood 



JOSEPH'S WELL 



THE ROADS 

they hid Joseph to get him out of the way was doubtless 
an old cistern. An ancient well is there to-day. 

This chapter in Genesis illustrates also the marvelous 
power the Hebrews had in telling stories. In the earliest 
days of any nation's history, Greek and Roman, German, 
Scotch and English, and preeminently of the oriental peo- 
ples, there used to be story-tellers, who would sit around 
the camp fires at night and either sing or tell the tales of the 
early tribal history — love stories, war stories, hero stories 
of all sorts. Story-telling is now coming to be a revived 
art. To-day we have professional story-tellers, people who 
have come to appreciate the high art, the nai've simplicity, 
the rich imagery, the power to interest both old and young, 
which good stories hold. But all who are adepts at story- 
telling agree that there are no better tales to tell, from 
any of these standpoints, than the stories of the Bible. 
Teachers of English in our colleges urge their students to 
go to the Old Testament to find out how to tell stories, 
and the Story-Tellers' League recommends Bible stories as 
affording the richest of material. 

Among the cycles of stories in the Old Testament the 
Joseph stories rank very high from the story-teller's point 
of view. Their hero is attractive, they are full of interest- 
ing detail, the progress of the scenes is rapid; there is 
vivid contrast in the characters introduced, in the coun- 
tries depicted, and in the fortunes of the chief actors ; 
there are suspense and hints of tragedy as the story pro- 
ceeds, but it all turns out right at the end. Every child 
should hear this story for its own sake and every child 
should know about Joseph and his coat of many colors 
in order to appreciate the many references to them in 

[27] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

literature. Let him see the little brother Joseph, the 
spoiled child of the family, bragging even in his dreams ; 
the exasperation of his older brothers and their plan to 
get rid of him ; the kindheartedness underneath the rough 
exterior of Reuben ; the Ishmaelite caravan coming from 
the East with goods of all sorts to sell in Egypt — not only 
spicery and balm and myrrh, but even slaves picked up 
on the way ; the stop they made at Dothan as the brothers 
were eating their noonday meal ; the denouement of it all 
when, with the silver in their pockets, they saw the last 
camels disappear down the coast road, bearing their little 
brother off to Egypt as a slave ; and the hurry with which 
they concocted a plausible story to tell their father while 
they dyed Joseph's pretty coat in the blood of a goat. The 
child will be sure to ask if that is all, and you must tell him 
the rest ; but this is enough for our purpose now, to show 
how even the roads of a land enter into its literature. 

And Jacob dwelt in the land of his father's sojournings, in the 
land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being 
seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren ; and he 
was a lad with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his 
father's wives : and Joseph brought the evil report of them unto 
their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, 
because he was the son of his old age : and he made him a coat of 
many colors. And his brethren saw that their father loved him more 
than all his brethren; and they hated him, and could not speak 
peaceably unto him. 

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren: and 
they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Hear, I pray 
you, this dream which I have dreamed : for, behold, we were binding 
sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright ; 
and, behold, your sheaves came round about, and made obeisance to 

[28] 



THE ROADS 

my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign 
over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they 
hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. And he 
dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren, and said, 
Behold, I have dreamed yet a dream ; and, behold, the sun and the 
moon and eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his 
father, and to his brethren ; and his father rebuked him, and said 
unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed ? Shall I and 
thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to 
thee to the earth ? And his brethren envied him ; but his father kept 
the saying in mind. 

And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. 
And Israel said unto Joseph, Are not thy brethren feeding the flock 
in Shechem ? come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to 
him, Here am I. And he said to him, Go now, see whether it is well 
with thy brethren, and well with the flock; and bring me word 
again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to 
Shechem. And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wan- 
dering in the field : and the man asked him, saying, What seekest 
thou ? And he said, I am seeking my brethren : tell me, I pray thee, 
where they are feeding the flock. And the man said, They are 
departed hence ; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And 
Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan. 

And they saw him afar off, and before he came near unto them, 
they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to 
another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let 
us slay him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, An 
evil beast hath devoured him : and we shall see what will become of 
his dreams. And Reuben heard it, and delivered him out of their 
hand, and said, Let us not take his life. And Reuben said unto 
them, Shed no blood ; cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, 
but lay no hand upon him : that he might deliver him out of their 
hand, to restore him to his father. And it came to pass, when Joseph 
was come unto his brethren, that they stripped Joseph of his coat, 
the coat of many colors that was on him ; and they took him, and 
cast him into the pit : and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. 

[29] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

And they sat down to eat bread : and they lifted up their eyes 
and looked, and, behold, a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from 
Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going 
to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brethren, What 
profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood ? Come, and 
let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him ; 
for he is our brother, our flesh. And his brethren hearkened unto 
him. And there passed by Midianites, merchantmen ; and they drew 
and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites 
for twenty pieces of silver. And they brought Joseph into Egypt. 

And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not 
in the pit ; and he rent his clothes. And he returned unto his breth- 
ren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go? And 
they took Joseph's coat, and killed a he-goat, and dipped the coat in 
the blood ; and they sent the coat of many colors, and they brought 
it to their father, and said, This have we found : know now whether 
it is thy son's coat or not. And he knew it, and said, It is my son's 
coat; an evil beast hath devoured him ; Joseph is without doubt torn 
in pieces. And Jacob rent his garments, and put sackcloth upon his 
loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all 
his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be com- 
forted ; and he said, For I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning. 
And his father wept for him. And the Midianites sold him into Egypt 
unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard. 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 
For roads and caravans, see 

Huntington, Ellsworth. Palestine and its Transformation, 
pp. 158-159. 

For the art of story -telling, see 

Baldwin, C. S. How to Write, chap, iii, " How to tell a Story." 
The Macmillan Company, New York. 50 cents. 

St. John, E. P. Stories and Story-Telling. The Pilgrim Press, 
Boston. 60 cents. 

Bryant, Sara Cone. How to tell Stories to Children. Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company. $1.00. 

[30] 



THE ROADS 

Houghton, Louise Seymour. Telling Bible Stories, chap, vii, 
" Hero Tales." Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.25. 

Hervey, Walter L. Picture Work, chap, v, " Stories and Story- 
Telling." Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. 25 cents. 

For stories retold, including Bible stories, see 

Bryant, Sara Cone. Stories to tell to Children. Houghton 

Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.00. 
Salisbury, Grace E., and Beckwith, Marie E. Index to 

Short Stories. Row, Peterson & Co., Chicago. 50 cents. 
List of Good Stories to tell to Children under Twelve Years of 

Age. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. 5 cents. 
Gaskom, Mrs. Herman. Children's Treasury of Bible Stories. 

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.25. 
Hodges, George. The Garden of Eden, chap, vii, " The Coat of 

Many Colors." Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.50. 
Baldwin, James. Old Stories from the East. American Book 

Company, New York. 45 cents. 



[31] 



SELECTION III. THE HILLS 

Ps. xxiv, 7-10 (xxiii, 7-10, Douay) ; Ps. cxxi (cxx, Douay) ; Ps. cxxv, 1, 2 
(cxxiv, 1, 2, Douay); Gen. xxii, 1-18; Isa. xxx, 15-17; Isa. xxxi, 1, 3-5. 

Although Palestine was open to the world along the 
coast, where the foreigner traveled freely with his armies 
and his merchandise, the Judean hills were a naturally for- 
tified region which by their very ruggedness and isolation 
protected the inhabitants from unwelcome visitors. Upon 
the very top of this range of mountains looms Mount 
Zion, nearly three thousand feet above sea level. This was 
the spot which David very wisely chose for his capital. Jeru- 
salem, however, was already an ancient city in David's 
time, about 1000 b.c, the time of the heroes of Homer's 
stories. Jerusalem was much older than Abraham, even, 
for it was there before we know anything at all of Hebrew 
history. When David dedicated this mount as his capital 
and as the place of worship for the God of his nation, he 
wrote a dedication hymn. This was doubtless to be sung 
as the procession of people wound its way up the hill with 
the ark. 1 In this hymn David speaks of the gates of the 
city as everlasting doors. The literal meaning of the word 
translated "everlasting" is "ancient," exceedingly old — so 

1 There is some question concerning the Davidic origin of this Psalm, 
but Professor Briggs says, " It is difficult to see how a Psalm could bet- 
ter fit a historical situation," and Professor Gordon thinks that while its 
setting belongs to a much later period, these verses (7 ff.) " strike the 
antique note " of the Davidic times (International Critical Commentary, 
" Psalms," and Gordon, The Poets of the Old Testament). 

[32] 



THE HILLS 

old that no one can remember when they were first placed 
there. The earliest people who inhabited the land saw the 
possibilities of this high hill as a fortress. There is evi- 
dence that even back behind the history of civilization the 
cave men sought refuge within a few miles of here. 

When King David ascended the throne he brought 
with him not only a remarkable genius for seeing what 
ought to be done to make his kingdom strong but also 
the ability to accomplish it. One of the things which he 
saw very plainly was that his army must not only conquer 
the enemy in the battlefield but there must be a capital 
so well fortified that no enemy could surprise them and 
take it away. This he found in Jerusalem. The old city 
stood the test of time well, resisting many an attack 
until it was the very last city to fall before the Babylonians 
carried the people away captive. David also saw that if 
his people were to be loyal to their God they must have a 
central place to worship, where they would all come to- 
gether from time to time with united enthusiasm. The 
king was a musician and a singer, as well as a warrior, 
with the dramatic feeling of an Oriental. He knew how 
to draw out the enthusiasm of a crowd and to make use 
of it for noble purposes. Therefore as the people came 
together on this great occasion, he had them march up the 
hill bearing the ark of Jehovah and singing the song he had 
composed. It is thought that he had a choir, perhaps two 
choirs, singing in the procession, and a soloist standing on 
the wall. As the choir approached the city gates they sang, 

Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; 
And be ye lifted up, ye ancient doors, 
And the King of Glory will come in. 

[33] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Then the soloist on the rampart replied, 
Who is the King of Glory ? 

Then all the people answered, 

Jehovah, strong and mighty, 
Jehovah, mighty in battle. 

The choir once more challenged the city gates : 

Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; 
Yea, lift them up, ye ancient doors, 
And the King of Glory will come in. 

Once more the soloist sang out, 

Who is this King of Glory ? 

And the people replied, 

Jehovah of hosts, 

He is the King of Glory. 

Thus David took this citadel for the dwelling place of his 
God Jehovah and for the capital of his nation. In true 
loftiness of spirit he had arranged the entire pageant to 
impress the people with the fact that it was not David, 
with his brilliant career, but Jehovah, who was their great 
King, Jehovah, " the King of Glory." 

In later years some one probably added to this hymn 
the first part of the Psalm, for it is in an altogether differ- 
ent style, not nearly so poetical nor so musical. In these 
few verses we doubtless have one of the very oldest hymns 
of the nation, and even with the additions it is a noble song 
worthy to be named " The Grand Processional." 

There are other hymns in the great hymn book of the 
Hebrews, the Book of Psalms, which celebrate Jerusalem 
and will forever perpetuate the high regard this people 

[34] 



THE HILLS 

had for their holy city. A collection of fifteen such songs 
within the book (Ps. cxx-cxxxiv) is called " The Pilgrim 
Psalter." These songs are lyrics of wonderful power and 
grace. It was the custom of the people to sing them on 
their journeys up to the great festivals held in Jerusalem. 
Imagine a caravan of people coming from the north country, 
picking up their relatives and neighbors in the villages 
through which they went, camping out by the wayside over 
night and singing their national hymns by the camp fire. 
As the Judean hills came closer and Mount Zion burst upon 
their view, they would break out with such a song as this : 

I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains : 
From whence shall my help come ? 
My help cometh from Jehovah, 
Who made heaven and earth. 

In their journeying they would know the need of a firm 
foot for climbing, of protection as they slept, of a merciful 
Providence that would keep them both from sunstroke by 
day and from moonstroke, or the lunacy or epilepsy that 
they believed came often from sleeping in the moonlight. 
They looked to Jehovah to keep them from all evil. 

There is something always uplifting about the hills. The 
very fact of looking up to a noble peak draws out the as- 
pirations of one's heart to climb upwards and be noble. 
Washington Gladden, one of our own hymn writers, is a 
Williams College man. Going back once to the scene of 
his college days among the Berkshire Hills, he was im- 
pressed anew with the wonderful drawing power of the 
hills themselves. Upon his return home from a walk on 
Stone Hill he sat down and composed " The Mountains," 

[35] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

which has ever since been the Williams College song. 
Every year when Williams men gather with their class- 
mates around the banquet table or at commencement to 
sing the praises of their Alma Mater, it is 

The Mountains ! the Mountains ! 
We greet them with a song, 

which rings out the most feelingly. 

The fact of being on a high place and looking down 
over the world and up to the " all uncharted seas " of the 
sky with its myriads of stars lifts one's heart up to the 
Creator of heaven and earth. Nature lovers feel this keenly 
to-day, but perhaps not nearly to the extent that those 
ancient people felt it, in their out-of-door life, seeking 
the " high places " as their places of prayer. 

How much those " high places " meant in stirring up 
lofty thoughts and giving birth to great religions we are 
just beginning to appreciate. Archaeologists have recently 
made interesting discoveries in their excavations of the city 
of Petra in Edom, seventy miles southeast of the Dead Sea. 
This old city is true to its name Petra, which means "rock," 
for its buildings were not built stone upon stone but hewn 
out of the living rock. There is no other city of the world 
to compare with Petra in this respect, for temples, sanctu- 
aries and a theater are constructed in this manner, with 
elaborate pillars, carvings, and color designs. One of the 
most interesting of the excavations has been that of the 
Great High Place on the top of one of the highest and 
most conspicuous of the neighboring mountain peaks, with 
an elevation of 3600 feet. Niches about a hundred feet 
apart for statues and pillars, and the ruins of a watchtower, 

[36] 



THE HILLS 

are to be seen on these stairways. Some of these adorn- 
ments were doubtless placed there in mediaeval times, and 
the elaborate sanctuary with its altars and seats for wor- 
shipers dates perhaps not farther back than 300 B.C., but 
the " high place " itself, with its simple raised platform 
cut away from the rest of the rock, was doubtless a sacred 
shrine, a place of prayer in the very early days of the 
Semitic race. Up there on that high, lonely mountain, 
looking down over the valleys and off to the high peaks 
beyond, and above to the heavens, with nothing between 
themselves and the greatness of God, men poured out their 
petitions to the Deity and offered their sacrifices of grati- 
tude for favors or of propitiation for sin. About twenty- 
five of these " high places " have been discovered near 
Petra, and this is only one illustration of the prevalence, 
throughout the whole region, of shrines upon the summits 
of the hills. Worship on such lofty places surely had much 
to do in developing the high religious ideals of the Semites. 
In time the Hebrews outgrew the primitive worship at 
the " high places " of the tribes around them and built a 
glorious temple on Mount Zion, but it was nevertheless the 
expression of the same craving for the high and lofty. 
Such a song as the one hundred twenty-first Psalm was 
worthy of being a national hymn, because when the people 
looked up to the hills they spoke of God in their hearts. 

I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains : 

From whence shall my help come? 

My help cometh from Jehovah, 

Who made heaven and earth. 

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : 

He that keepeth thee will not slumber. 

[37] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Behold, he that keepeth Israel 

Will neither slumber nor sleep. 

Jehovah is thy keeper : 

Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand. 

The sun shall not smite thee by day, 

Nor the moon by night. 

Jehovah will keep thee from all evil ; 

He will keep thy soul. 

Jehovah will keep thy going out and thy coming in 

From this time forth and for evermore. 

Another of these hymns in the Pilgrim Psalter begins 

They that trust in Jehovah 

Are as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, 

but abideth for ever. 
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, 
So Jehovah is round about his people 
From this time forth and for evermore. 1 



Abraham on Mount Moriah 

Gen. xxii, 1-18 

It was to one of these "high places" — Mount Moriah — 
that Abraham, in the very earliest Hebrew history, took 
his son Isaac to sacrifice him to Jehovah. It seems a very 
strange thing to us that any father who loved his boy could 
think of doing such a barbarous deed, but we must re- 
member, that was a barbarous, half-civilized age, when it 
was the custom of the heathen tribes in Canaan to sacri- 
fice their first-born sons to their gods. This was doubtless 
the way Abraham reasoned : " Jehovah is my God, and I 
must show that I regard him as highly as any of these 

1 PS. CXXV, I, 2. 

[38] 



THE HILLS 

other tribes regard their gods. They sacrifice the most 
precious things they have, not only the first-born of their 
flocks but their first-born sons, to show to what length 
they will go in loyalty to their gods, and so I must show 
my loyalty to Jehovah by giving my very best to him." It 
is true God asked him to give his best ; our God always 
asks our very best. But it was up there on the " high 
place," communing with the spiritual God of heaven, that 
Abraham found out that the true God does not demand 
such barbarous deeds in presenting to him the best we 
have. Abraham there learned that we please God much 
better by a consecrated life than by a bloody death — that 
we should be ready to die for our faith, indeed, if neces- 
sary, but that useless sacrifice of life God not only does 
not require but forbids. This was a great step in the evo- 
lution of religion. When the world learned that, it learned 
a great lesson, yet it has not wholly learned it even to this 
day, for men still sacrifice children in sweatshops and 
factories. Abraham was one of the world's greatest reli- 
gious geniuses, because up there on that " high place" he 
had the clarified vision to recognize the truth. Other races 
have similar tales (as, for example, the Greek story of Iphi- 
genia), but no other story rises to the sublime height of 
religious perception which this story of Abraham and Isaac 
contains. This story has held the interest of many genera- 
tions and is one of the best-told in the Old Testament. 

And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abra- 
ham, and said unto him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And 
he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even 
Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah ; and offer him there for 
a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. 

[39] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took 
two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son ; and he clave the 
wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of 
which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his 
eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young 
men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder ; 
and we will worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the 
wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son ; and he 
took in his hand the fire and the knife ; and they went both of them 
together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My 
father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold, the 
fire and the wood : but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering ? And 
Abraham said, God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, 
my son : so they went both of them together. 

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and 
Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound 
Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham 
stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the 
angel of Jehovah called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, 
Abraham : and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thy hand 
upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him ; for now I know 
that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine 
only son, from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, 
and, behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns : 
and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt- 
offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of 
that place Jehovah-jireh : as it is said to this day, In the mount of 
Jehovah it shall be provided. And the angel of Jehovah called unto 
Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said, By myself have I 
sworn, saith Jehovah, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not 
withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, 
and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens, 
and as the sand which is upon the seashore ; and thy seed shall possess 
the gate of his enemies ; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the 
earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed my voice. 

[40] 



THE HILLS 
Isaiah's Warning 

Isa. xxx, 15-17 ; Isa. xxxi, 1, 3-5 

The natural strength which Israel had in the hills was 
seen by the great prophets as well as by David. Some of 
them realized the danger that such a little nation would in- 
cur if she tried to fight with the formidable hosts of the 
Assyrians and Egyptians in the kind of warfare they were 
accustomed to and with their weapons ; they realized also 
that Israel might utterly defeat her enemies, or at least 
escape them entirely, if she clung to the advantages of her 
own rustic home training, just as David with his sling had 
the advantage over the Philistine and his sword. 1 The 
Hebrews were experts at guerrilla warfare, that is, hiding 
in small bands among the hills and in caves, and spring- 
ing out unexpectedly upon the enemy, much as our Indians 
used to do in the forests. David used this method most 
successfully. 2 Judas Maccabeus won his victories that 
way. 3 On the other hand, the Assyrians and Egyptians 
fought best out in the open, with great armies, with horses 
and chariots and much display of power. This they could 
do on the plains but not on the rocky hillsides. Chariots 
were of no use for fighting in such steep places as Jeru- 
salem and the hill country of Judea. Down in Samaria 
they could be used to better advantage. The Hebrews 
often saw them there passing down the coast road to 
Egypt. One of the Assyrian monarchs, who conquered 
right and left, had a chariot with a scythe attached, with 
which to mow down the people ; but a mowing machine is 

1 1 Sam. xvii. 2 1 Samuel 3 1 Maccabees. 

[41] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

of little account on a rocky hillside, and so Isaiah warned 
his townsmen to stay at home in Jerusalem and not go 
down to the plain to fight with chariots and horses. The 
chariots and cavalry of Assyria were considered the most 
powerful in the world, and Egypt was always famous for 
its fine horses. The Israelites were preeminently an in- 
fantry people and could fight best on foot. There came 
a time, however, when they considered it plebeian to stick 
to their old customs. They thought that in order to be 
like the people of the world, and not backwoodsmen, they 
too must have horses and chariots. They did not own 
them ; consequently they sent embassies down to Egypt to 
borrow them. Because they were awkward in driving these 
chariots and must go away from their own familiar ground 
in order to use them, they were almost sure to be defeated 
in any contest with expert horsemen. How fine the war 
horses were in those days is shown by pictures of them 
on the old Assyrian sculptures and by such a description 
as is given in the thirty-ninth chapter of the Book of Job. 

Hast thou given the horse his might? 

Hast thou clothed his neck with the quivering mane ? 

Hast thou made him to leap as a locust? 

The glory of his snorting is terrible. 

He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength : 

He goeth out to meet the armed men. 

He mocketh at fear, and is not dismayed ; 

Neither turneth he back from the sword. 

He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage ; 

Neither standeth he still at the voice of the trumpet. 

As oft as the trumpet soundeth he saith, Aha ! 

And he smelleth the battle afar off, 

The thunder of the captains, and the shouting. 

[42] 



THE HILLS 

To manage such a war horse would take much skill. 
Isaiah knew his countrymen could not compete with their 
enemies in that art of war. So it was that in a very seri- 
ous crisis in Israel's history Isaiah did his best to keep the 
king from yielding to the false counselors of his court, 
who tried to persuade him to send down to Egypt and hire 
horses and chariots with which to fight the Assyrians. He 
warned them to stay at home and be quiet, and trust to 
their natural defenses and in the God of the hills whom 
they worshiped up in Mount Zion. If they were foolish 
enough to try a new art of warfare, they would soon be 
fleeing in disgrace before their pursuers, mowed down 
so fast that what was left of them would be like a lonely 
pole sticking upon a barren hilltop. But if they stayed 
at home and trusted the Lord, he would be like a lion pro- 
tecting them or an eagle hovering over her mountain nest. 

For thus the Lord Jehovah, Israel's Holy One, saith, 

By sitting still and remaining quiet ye shall be delivered, 

In resting and trusting shall your strength consist. 

But ye refused, and said, Nay, 

On steeds will we speed ; therefore ye shall speed in flight ! 

And, On swift steeds will we ride. Therefore your pursuers shall 

be swift ! 
Each thousand shall flee at the war-cry of one. 
From the war-cry of five ye shall flee, till ye are but a remnant, 
Like a pole on the top of a mountain and like a signal on a hill. 1 

Woe unto those that go down to Egypt for help, 
Who rely on horses and trust in chariots because they are many, 
And in horsemen because they are very strong, 
But have not looked unto the Holy One of Israel, and have not con- 
sulted Jehovah. 

1 Isa. xxx, 15-17, Kent's translation in " Student's Old Testament." 

[43] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Now, the Eygptians are men and not God, 

And their horses flesh and not spirit ; 

And if Jehovah stretch out his hand, 

He that helpeth will stumble, 

And he that is helped will fall, 

And they all will be consumed together. 

For thus saith Jehovah unto me, 

As the lion with the young lion growleth over his prey, 

Against whom there is called a troop of shepherds, — 

(At their shouting he is not terrified, 

And at their noise he is not daunted) 

So shall Jehovah of hosts come down to battle upon the Mount and 

hill of Zion. 
Like birds hovering, so shall Jehovah of hosts shelter Jerusalem, 
Sheltering and delivering, passing over and rescuing. 1 



SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 
For cave dwellers, see 

Grant, Elihu. The Peasantry of Palestine. The Pilgrim Press, 
Boston. $1.50. 

Bible dictionaries {the following are especially recommended)-. 
The Standard Bible Dictionary. Funk & Wagnalls Company, 

New York. $6.00. 
Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible (complete in one volume). 

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $5.00. 
Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols.). Charles Scribner's 

Sons, New York. $35.00. 
Macalister, R. A. Stewart. Bible Side-Lights from the 
Mound of Gezer (well illustrated). Charles Scribner's Sons, 
New York. $1.25. 

For comme?its on the Psalms, see 

Briggs, C. A. The International Critical Commentary, " Psalms." 
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $3.00 a volume. 

1 Isa. xxxi, 1, 3-5, Cheyne's translation. 

[44] 



THE HILLS 

Moulton, R. G. The Modern Reader's Bible. The Macmillan 

Company, New York. $2.00. 
Fowler, H. T. The History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 

The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.25. 
Gordon. The Poets of the Old Testament. 

For a description of the Great High Place at Petra, see 

Huntington, Ellsworth. Palestine and its Transformation, 
pp. 223 ff. 

Handcock, P. S. P. Latest Light on Bible Lands, p. 244. Soci- 
ety for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London. $1.80. 

Robinson, George E. " The High Places of Petra," Biblical 
World, January, 1908. 

Wilson, E. L. "A Photographer's Visit to Petra " (illustrated), 
Century Magazine, November, 1885. 

For a description of another High Place, see 

Macalister. Bible Side-Lights from the Mound of Gezer. 

For the location of Mount Moriah, see 

Bible dictionaries. 
For the custom of sacrificing the first-born, see 

Macalister. Bible Side-Lights from the Mound of Gezer, 

pp. 168-172. 
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, 
art. " First-born." 

For an estimate of the literary value of the story of Abraham and 
Isaac, see 
Fowler, H. T. The History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 
For the fine horses of Egypt, see 

Tristram, H. B. Natural History of the Bible. Society for Pro- 
moting Christian Knowledge, London. 
Encyclopaedias. 

For comments on the passages from Isaiah, see 
Driver. Isaiah : his Life and Times, chap. vi. 



[45 



SELECTION IV. THE ATTRACTIONS OF 
THE PLAIN 

Samson and the Wheat Fields 

Judges xv, 4-17 

The Maritime Plain, the little strip of level land on the 
coast south of Mount Carmel, from eight to fifteen miles 
wide, is the most attractive part of the country. It is 
very fertile and easily cultivated, with a delightful climate 
like that of southern France, warm enough for such fruit 
trees as the orange and the apricot, with beautiful waving 
fields of wheat. As one looks out over the landscape in 
the summer months it appears like a sea of dead-ripe 
grain waving in the breeze. This portion of Palestine was 
picked out very early by settlers from the northwest, called 
Philistines. They did not belong to the same race as the 
Hebrews, for the Hebrews were Semites from the east. 
The Philistines were of the Aryan race, which includes the 
Greeks and Romans, the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, and 
ourselves. Perhaps originally they had lived on the island 
of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea, and had been adven- 
turous enough to skirt its coasts and find this fertile little 
strip on the shore of Palestine ; for the Aryans were 
more daring than the Semites and pushed their way into 
new lands more readily. It is from the name of these 
people that the word Palestine comes, the Greeks calling 

[46] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE PLAIN 

that little eastern strip along the Mediterranean Palais tine, 
or the land where the Philistines lived. The Romans 
changed it to Palestina and we to Palestine. These peo- 
ple built a number of fortified cities on the plain ; Gaza 
was one, Ashkelon another. We hear a great deal about 
these cities and how hard they were to conquer, for the 
Philistines were fighters. Goliath, the big giant whom 
David met with his sling, was a Philistine. When Alex- 
ander the Great, himself a Greek with the same Aryan 
blood in his veins, came down the coast conquering every- 
thing before him, he had to stop a long time before the 
people of Gaza would give in. 

These Philistines were in the plain when the Israelites 
came back from Egypt, and were an endless amount of 
trouble to them, for the Israelites could not drive them 
out, and every once in a while the Philistines would make 
a raid upon the Hebrews, taking away their crops and de- 
stroying their villages, and at one time taking off all their 
forges so that they had no means of sharpening their 
swords. If they wanted to sharpen their agricultural im- 
plements even, they had to go down to some village of 
the Philistines to do it. 1 This was very humiliating to the 
Hebrews, and Saul and David spent much of their time 
in battles with the Philistines, driving them back away 
from the hills down into their own country on the plain. 
But before the time of Saul and David, when the Israel- 
ites first tried to get possession of the country, they did 
not know how strong these people were, and when the 
land was portioned out to the various tribes, one tribe, 
Dan, chose a piece of the coast plain. It certainly looked 

1 i Sam. xiii, 19-23. 

[47] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

most attractive, and they started to settle there. Between 
the plain and the high mountains of Jerusalem are some 
low hills, the halfway ground, the highlands, with valleys 
where mountain brooks rush down after the heavy rains 
of fall and spring, and where there used to be good 
hunting. It was here that the Danites got their first foot- 
hold and settled in a few villages. In one of these villages, 
Zorah, there was a. very athletic boy named Samson, who 
became famous for his strength. He could " do stunts " 
that would startle even the most accomplished athlete of 
the present day, and so remarkable were the stories of his 
feats, which were handed down from father to son, that 
he became the great athletic hero of Hebrew literature. 
Some of the most interesting hero stories of the days of 
the Judges are about this young man Samson, and the hill 
country of that region is now called "the Samson Coun- 
try." But the attractions of the plain farther down were a 
constant temptation to the Danites. They tried their best 
to win it away from the Philistines but were always de- 
feated, and gave up the struggle in disgust. Then they 
struck away north as far as they could get, and conquered 
a city named Laish up in the Lebanons, changing its 
name to Dan. After this the phrase " from Dan to Beer- 
sheba " meant the whole length of the land from Dan in 
the extreme north to Beersheba in the extreme south. 

But it was while the Danites were still fighting for their 
territory on the seacoast that Samson appeared as their 
champion. The lure of the Philistines was great for him 
as well as for all his tribe, and he used to go down to a 
near-by village, Timnah, to see a girl whom he wanted for 
his wife. But one day they quarreled, and when he went 

[48] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE PLAIN 

back after a while to make it up, he found her father had 
married her to some one else. This made him very angry, 
and so he caught a great number of foxes (or more likely 
they were jackals, an animal very much like the fox), ty- 
ing their tails together, with firebrands between, and send- 
ing them running frantically through the dry grainfields 
of the Philistines. These jackals are very numerous in 
Palestine still, making night hideous with their howls. 
One traveler thus describes a concert of jackals: "You 
may be serenaded by them every night, but they are par- 
ticularly musical in the fiercest storms. Deliver me from 
their music. I was terrified. It began in a sort of solo ; a 
low, long-drawn wail, rising and swelling higher and higher 
until it quite overtopped the wind ; and just when it was 
about to choke off in utter despair, it was reenforced by 
many others, yelling, screaming, barking, wailing, as if a 
whole legion of demons were fighting." Some of the boys 
on western ranches know the howling of the coyote, but 
the barking of the coyote is nothing to the yelling jackal. 
They differ from the fox because they hunt in packs in- 
stead of prowling about singly for their prey. They are 
accustomed to run side by side, so that if their tails were 
tied together they would not pull in opposite directions as 
foxes would probably do, but Samson's firebrands dragging 
behind would set the fields afire in a hundred and fifty 
places. It was a wicked thing to do, considered a criminal 
offense even in those barbarous times, for a very ancient 
law has come down to the Arabs of the present day, not 
to set fire to standing grain or the bush belonging to 
another man. The punishment which they prescribe is 
nothing short of death even if the fire is an accident. 

[49] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

But Samson had his revenge. After it was done, how- 
ever, his countrymen were very angry with him because 
he had so enraged the Philistines, who were their enemies. 
To appease them he let them bind him with cords and 
hand him over to the enemy, and then the story goes on 
to say that before them all he broke the cords as if they 
had been burnt string, and seizing the jawbone of a dead 
ass lying near, he rushed at the surprised crowd, laying 
about him right and left and slaying a thousand men. 

From this old hero story the Hebrews made a rhyme 
which was based upon a pun, the Hebrew words for " ass " 
and " mass " sounding the same. 

With the jawbone of an ass have I massed a mass ; 
With the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand. 1 

Punning is a coarse kind of humor, but the surprise of 
it always makes us smile. Riddles and conundrums are 
based largely on puns. The Samson riddles are among 
the earliest forms of Hebrew literature, and the Hebrews 
always enjoyed a play on words. 

Samson was afterwards taken captive in Gaza, and his 
eyes were put out. The revenge he sought then was to 
break down the pillars of the great temple in that city, 
when it was full of people at a feast. The Philistines were 
too strong for Samson, as they were for his whole tribe, 
but the story of his great deeds and the pity of his slavery 
forms an interesting part of Bible story, and was incorpo- 
rated into English literature by no less a poet than Milton. 

To grind in brazen fetters under task, 
Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves ! 
Oh, change beyond report, thought or belief ! 

1 Gordon's translation in " Poets of the Old Testament." 

[50] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE PLAIN 

Can this be he 
Who tore the lion as the lion tears the kid ? 

Then with what trivial weapon came to hand, 

The jaw of a dead ass his sword of bone, 

A thousand foreskins fell, the flower of Palestine. 

And Samson went and caught three hundred jackals, and took 
torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst be- 
tween every two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he 
let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up 
both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the oliveyards. 
Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this ? And they said, Sam- 
son, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he hath taken his wife, 
and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and 
burnt her and her father with fire. And Samson said unto them, If 
ye do after this manner, surely I will be avenged of you, and after 
that I will cease. And he smote them hip and thigh with a great 
slaughter : and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of 
Etam. 

Then the Philistines went up and encamped in Judah, and spread 
themselves in Lehi. And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come 
up against us? And they said, To bind Samson are we come up, to 
do to him as he hath done to us. Then three thousand men of Judah 
went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, 
Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us ? what then 
is this that thou hast done unto us ? And he said unto them, As they 
did unto me, so have I done unto them. And they said unto him, 
We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the 
hand of the Philistines. And Samson said unto them, Swear unto me, 
that ye will not fall upon me yourselves. And they spake unto him, 
saying, No ; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their 
hand : but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with 
two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock. 

When he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him : 
and the Spirit of Jehovah came mightily upon him, and the ropes 
that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and 

[51] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

his bands dropped from off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone 
of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and smote a thousand 
men therewith. And Samson said, 

With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, 

With the jawbone of an ass have I smitten a thousand men. 

And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that 
he cast away the jawbone out of his hand ; and that place was called 
the hill of the jawbone. 1 



The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley 

Song of Songs ii, i (Canticle of Canticles ii, i, Douay) 

North of this " Samson Country" and the Plain of the 
Philistines lies the Plain of Sharon, sung into Hebrew 
literature by the familiar verse in the Song of Songs, 
I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. 

This plain is below Mount Carmel, extending toward Joppa 
fifty miles, and is most luxuriant with fruit and flowers. 
Frosts are here unknown, and the rains and dews very 
copious. The particular flower mentioned in the Song of 
Songs as the rose of Sharon is by some supposed to be 
the rockrose found on Mount Carmel, although it is prob- 
ably our narcissus, which is very beautiful and abundant 
here. The lily of the valley mentioned so many times in 
the Song was probably the anemone, the most abundant 
and conspicuous flower to be found in Palestine. The 
blossoms are of several different colors, — lilac, white, 
and red, — but the one most frequently seen is the bril- 
liant scarlet. It is a gorgeous sight to see a field of 

1 American Revised Version, with marginal readings. 

[52] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE PLAIN 

these anemones, spread out before us like a gayly colored 
carpet. They grow everywhere on the hills and in the 
plains, by the shores of the lake and in the crevices of 
the rocks, but nowhere are they more beautiful than on the 
Plain of Sharon, where they are scattered luxuriantly over 
those broad fields. This was doubtless the flower that Jesus 
plucked and held up before his audience when he said, 

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, 
neither do they spin ; yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 1 

A plant somewhat like our foxglove covers wide acres 
of the Plain of Sharon. Around Jaffa (or Joppa) there 
grow the most fruitful orange groves, the oranges selling 
for half a cent apiece. Just south of Carmel there are 
evidences showing that oak forests stood there in ancient 
times. There are three kinds of oaks in Palestine, and 
they are often mentioned in the Bible. The traditional oak 
of Abraham down in Hebron 2 and the one upon which 
Absalom caught his hair 3 are among the most famous 
single trees, but the oak forests of the plateau of Gilead, 
east of Jordan, and of the Plain of Sharon were doubtless 
among the most delightful stretches of wooded country 
Palestine then contained. These old oak woods of Sharon 
have for the most part disappeared ; scrub oaks now take 
their place. North of Carmel is the Plain of Acre, where 
flowers and birds flourish in the springtime. Flowers of all 
sorts are here, too numerous to be counted. Some of the 
most conspicuous of them are flowers that we prize in our 
own gardens. Anemones and brilliant poppies and the 

1 Matt, vi, 28, 29 ; Luke xii, 27. 2 Gen. xxiii, 17. 

3 2 Sam. xviii, 9. 

[53] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

orchises which we consider so rare are the most common 
flowers, and the air is fragrant with the perfume from the 
sweet wild hyacinths. The birds too are as joyous as the 
flowers, singing their hearts out for the delight of living. 
East of Carmel is the Plain of Esdraelon, the great granary 
of Palestine, with the river Kishon flowing through it north- 
westward to the Mediterranean Sea. Such are the attrac- 
tions of the plains in contrast to the bleak hills of Judea, 
but it was on the hills that the greatest thoughts were born. 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For the Maritime Plain and " the Samson Country" see 
Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land, chap. viii. 
Thomson, W. M. The Land and the Book. Harper & Brothers, 

New York, i860. New edition, London, 1886. 
Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine. 
Baedeker. Palestine and Syria. Charles Scribner's Sons, New 

York. $3.60. 

For jackals, see 

Thomson. The Land and the Book. 
Tristram. The Natural History of the Bible. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For Samson's riddles, see 

Gordon. The Poets of the Old Testament. 

Fowler. The History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 

For the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley, see 
Tristram. The Natural History of the Bible. 
Hazard, Caroline. A Brief Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.50. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For other plants on the Plain of Sharon see the above-mentioned 
books and 
Goodrich-Freer, A. Things seen in Palestine. E. P. Dutton 
& Company, New York. 7$ cents. 

[54] 




Underwood & Underwood 

THE RIVER KISHON AND THE OLD BATTLEGROUND 



SELECTION V. THE RIVER KISHON AND 
DEBORAH'S SONG 

Judges v 

Rivers are comparatively few in Palestine. There is the 
one long river, the Jordan, running north and south, hav- 
ing its source up in the Lebanons and ending in the Dead 
Sea. There are three short ones running at right angles 
from the east side, two into the Jordan and one into the 
Dead Sea. These are the Yarmuk, the Jabbok, and the 
Arnon. Then there is another which rises in the eastern 
hills of Samaria just west of the Jordan and, flowing north- 
westward through the fertile Plain of Esdraelon, empties 
into the Mediterranean under the brow of Mt. Carmel. 
This is the Kishon, and it played a very important part on 
a certain day in one of the great battles of Israel. Indeed, 
in the plain through which this river runs there is one of 
the oldest battlefields of the world's history. Here in this 
middle ground between Asia and Africa many armies have 
gathered to fight out their quarrels, because it was halfway 
ground and because the valley here stretches out for many 
miles between the hills on either side, where chariots and 
horses as well as men would have a chance to spread 
themselves out. 

The river Kishon is a very peculiar stream. It flows 
along its crooked course quite sluggishly in the summer- 
time, in some places hardly to be seen, while in the winter, 

[55] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

when the heavy rains fall, it becomes a raging torrent, 
overflowing its banks and making a sticky mud that is 
almost impossible to cross. Often at such times animals 
and baggage have disappeared from sight. 

Now there was a time in Israel's history when the 
whole country was in a very confused state, when the 
Canaanites as well as the Philistines were doing their best 
to make it hard for the Hebrews and to drive them out of 
the land. The Canaanites, of course, were the first settlers. 
They came to Palestine long before Abraham was born, 
perhaps as many as two thousand years before. The land 
was named Canaan for them, and naturally they thought it 
belonged to them, and resented the newcomers as inter- 
lopers, just as our American Indians resented the en- 
croachments of the Europeans. But the Israelites believed 
this country had been promised to them, and when they at 
last escaped from slavery down in Egypt, they crossed the 
Jordan under Joshua's lead, thinking it would be a short 
matter to take possession of the land. But it was not so 
easy as they thought. The Canaanites lived in walled vil- 
lages and had chariots and horses to fight with. The 
Israelites must fight on foot and were not well organized. 
When they had first come in sight of the Promised Land, 
two of the tribes and a part of another asked the special 
privilege of remaining on the east side of the Jordan, 
where there w T as good pasture for their flocks. They 
promised faithfully to come over the river and help the 
rest fight their battles in time of need. But after a while 
they found it easier to stay at home, and some of the 
other tribes, too, were very selfish in the way they forgot 
to look after anyone's interests but their own. 

[56] 



THE RIVER KISHON AND DEBORAH'S SONG 

These twelve tribes were somewhat like our colonies in 
early American history, or, more truly, like the Scottish 
clans at the time Walter Scott was writing about in " The 
Lady of the Lake." You remember that when Roderick 
Dhu wanted to marshal the clans together for a fight, he 
killed a goat and had the priest dip the ends of a cross in 
its blood, pronouncing a curse upon every clan which should 
fail to heed the signal and rally around the chieftain. 

Then Roderick with impatient look 

From Brian's hand the symbol took : 

" Speed, Malise, speed ! " he said, and gave 

The crosslet to his henchman brave. 

" The muster-place be Lanrick mead — 

Instant the time — speed, Malise, speed ! " 

Some such message as that was sent to the tribes of 
Israel by Deborah, the famous woman judge of the He- 
brews, when she saw there must be a battle with their old- 
time enemy, the Canaanites. Some of the tribes listened 
and some of them did not. The Reubenites who tended 
their flocks over on the east side of the Jordan had " great 
searchings of heart," we are told, but decided, after all, to 
stay at home and watch their sheep. The tribes that were 
on the seacoast had nothing to fear either, and so they 
" sat still on the shore." There was likewise a village, 
called Meroz, where the inhabitants refused to help at all, 
and thus brought down upon themselves a heavy curse. 

But some of the tribes " risked their lives to the death" 
and earned Deborah's deepest gratitude. In her song she 

says, 

My heart is towards the leaders of Israel, 

That offered themselves willingly among the people. 

[57] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Deborah was a wonderful woman. Those were days when 
the Canaanites were so troublesome that the Israelites did 
not dare to travel the highroad for fear of being robbed 
or murdered, and so they skulked from place to place 
along bypaths. No man was brave enough to come out 
boldly and rally the people for war. But they all knew 
there was this very wise woman up in the hill country of 
Ephraim, and so when they had any special trouble they 
came to her for advice. Finally she saw that the only way 
out of their difficulties was for them all to get together 
and fight the Canaanites unitedly. Therefore she sent for 
a man she knew, named Barak, and told him to gather as 
many men as he could on the slope of Mount Tabor, 
which is at the head of the plain through which the river 
Kishon flows. He succeeded in getting ten thousand 
together. They were on foot, and the enemy was down 
below in the valley with nine hundred chariots of iron. 
The Israelites had the advantage of position, but even so, 
had it not been for a most providential occurrence, they 
might have been defeated. Deborah says in her song that 
heaven fought for them, and so it did, for there was a 
great rain that day, perhaps the first of the winter rains, 
which is called " the pourer." The river suddenly over- 
flowed its banks, and Sisera and his chariots were hope- 
lessly stuck in the mud. Of course this made an occasion 
for a very triumphant exultation in the song. Deborah 
cries out at this crisis of the battle, 

O my soul, march on with strength ! 

Then she describes the plunging and stamping of the 
horses as they pulled themselves out of the mud and 

[58] 



THE RIVER KISHON AND DEBORAH'S SONG 

galloped away. We have learned already that the Hebrew 
poets were very fond of the figure of speech called ono- 
matopoeia, or the imitation of sounds by words. We find 
it true in this very early song. 

Then pounded the hoofs of the horses, 
With the gallop, the gallop of strong ones, 
And the river of Kishon swept them away, 
The on-rushing river of Kishon. x 

The Hebrew word for "gallop " is daharoth, which, if re- 
peated several times, sounds like the pounding of horses' 
hoofs on a road. 

In the midst of all this commotion Sisera, the captain 
of the Canaanites, escaped on foot. He hurried as fast as 
he could away from the scene, expecting any moment to 
be caught as a fugitive and killed. After he had succeeded 
in putting thirty miles or more between himself and the 
battlefield he thought it was safe to rest a bit, so ex- 
hausted was he with his run. He saw a tent in the dis- 
tance, which he recognized as the home of a friend of his, 
Heber, the Kenite. At least, he supposed he was a friend, 
for, although an Israelite, Heber had adopted the policy 
of peace with his neighbors the Canaanites. But Sisera 
did not count rightly upon Heber's wife, Jael, for she was 
loyal as she could be to her own kith and kin. She saw 
her chance when Sisera hastened to the door of the tent 
and asked if he might get a drink and rest a little while. 
Most hospitably she received him, bringing out milk in- 
stead of water and pouring it into her choicest bowl. She 
had him lie down and covered him with a rug. Then, 

1 Gordon's translation in " Poets of the Old Testament." 

[59] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

when he had fallen fast asleep in his weariness, she pulled 
up one of the tent-pins and, taking a hammer, stole up 
softly to his couch and drove the pin through his temple. 
That was the end of Sisera and the end of the conflict 
with the Canaanites. 

But there was one more scene to follow, which Deborah 
depicts most graphically and, we cannot help feeling, with 
delight. At Sisera's home his mother was waiting for him 
at nightfall. There was not a question in her mind but 
that he would gain an easy victory over those poor, half^ 
organized Israelites, and that he would bring home captive 
maidens and spoil in abundance for all the household. 
But he did not come and did not come, and as she peered 
out of the window in the twilight and strained her ears to 
hear the first sound of his chariot wheels, she made up many 
excuses for the long delay of her son, who never came. 

This is the climax of the poem, and one can feel the 
exultation of Deborah and the Israelites as they learned 
the fate of Sisera and the day's triumph. It was a wild 
and barbarous age. Jael, in her ferocious revengefulness, 
may be compared to Boadicea of Britain, and the far- 
sighted, courageous Deborah — prophet, poet, and heroine 
of Israel — to the great heroine of France, Joan of Arc. 

There are two accounts of this story — one in prose, in 
Judges iv, and the poem of Judges v. The poem is doubt- 
less the older; indeed, it is probably the very oldest com- 
plete piece of literature which the Bible contains. It is 
supposed to have been taken from a very old Book of War 
Ballads referred to in the Old Testament but lost to us. 
"We count ourselves fortunate," says Professor Fowler, 
" that this one has been preserved." And Dr. Gordon, in 

[60] 



THE RIVER KISHON AND DEBORAH'S SONG 

his " Poets of the Old Testament," says it is " a song that 
for force and fire is worthy to be placed alongside the 
noblest battle odes in any language." 

Deborah's Song 

The Theme Announced 

For that the leaders took the lead in Israel, 
For that the people offered themselves willingly, 
Bless ye Jehovah — 

Historical Prelude 
Hear, O ye kings ; 
Give ear, O ye princes, 
I, even I, will sing unto Jehovah, 
I will sing praise to Jehovah, the God of Israel. 
Jehovah, when thou wentest forth out of Seir, 
When thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, 
The earth trembled, the heavens also dropped, 
Yea, the clouds dropped water. 
The mountains quaked at the presence of Jehovah, 
Even yon Sinai at the presence of Jehovah, the God of Israel. 1 

Description of IsraePs Sad Estate before the Battle 

In the days of Shamgar ben-Anath, the high roads were deserted 

And travelers went by winding paths. 

Still lay the villages in Israel, 

And hushed was the work of the country-folk, 

1 This refers to some great earthquake and storm during the wander- 
ings of the Israelites, revealing God's majesty and strength. " In words 
that flash and roll the song describes the glorious advent of the Most 
High, nature astir with his presence, the mountains shaking under his 
tread." Compare a passage in Greek literature (Hesiod) : 

Great Olympus trembled beneath the immortal feet. 
(See Expositor's and Cambridge Bibles.) 

[61] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

No shield was seen, or spear, 
'Mong the forty thousands in Israel — 
Until that I, Deborah, arose, 
That I arose, a mother in Israel. 

Return to the Theme of the Poem (a Refrain of Gratitude) 

My heart is toward the leaders of Israel 

That offered themselves willingly among the people. 

Bless ye Jehovah — 
Tell of it, ye that ride on white asses, 1 
Ye that sit on rich carpets, 
And ye that walk by the way : — 
Far from the noise of archers, 
In the places of drawing water : — 
There shall they rehearse Jehovah's righteous acts, 
Even the righteous acts of his rule in Israel. 

Deborah's Wild War Chant which roused the Hosts of Israel 

Awake, awake, Deborah, 

Awake, awake, strike up the song ! 

Up with thee, Barak ! put on thy strength 

And lead away thy captive train, thou son of Abinoam. 

The Muster 

So a remnant went down against the powerful, 

The people of Jehovah went down against the mighty : 

From Ephraim they rushed forth into the valley, 

His brother Benjamin among the ranks ; 

From Machir went down commanders, 

And from Zebulon those who carry the marshal's staff, 

Men of Issachar marched with Deborah, 

And men of Naphtali with Barak ; 

1 Rulers rode on white asses. This verse calls on both rich and poor 
to tell the story. They are to tell it by the wells, the gathering places 
of the people. 

[62] 



THE RIVER KISHON AND DEBORAH'S SONG 

Into the valley they rushed forth in his steps. 

By the brooks of Reuben 

There were great resolves of heart. 

Then why didst thou stay by the sheep-folds 

To list to the pipings for flocks ? 

By the brooks of Reuben 

There were deep searchings of heart ! 

Gilead abode beyond Jordan, 

And Dan sat still by the ships, 

Asher stayed on the seashore, 

Quietly abode by his havens, 

But Zebulon — he flung his soul to the death 

With Naphtali on the heights of the field. 

The Battle and Rout 

The kings came and fought ; 

Then fought the kings of Canaan, 

In Taanach by the waters of Megiddo : x 

They took no gain of money. 

From heaven fought the stars, 

From their courses fought against Sisera. 

The river Kishon swept them away, 

The ancient river, the river Kishon. 

O my soul, march on with strength ! 

Then pounded the hoofs of the horses, 

With the galloping, galloping of their powerful steeds. 

The Curse against Meroz 2 

Curse ye Meroz, saith Jehovah, 

With curses curse its inhabitants, 

For they came not to the help of Jehovah, 

To the help of Jehovah among the brave. 

1 The ancient battlefield. 

2 Meroz was probably a village through which Sisera ran on his road 
home. 

[63] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

The Retribution 

Most blessed of women be Jael, 

That wife of Heber the Kenite, 

Most blessed of nomad women be. 

Water he asked and milk she gave, 

Buttermilk brought in a lordly bowl. 

She put her hand to the tent-pin 

And her right hand to the workman's hammer, 

And she struck Sisera, she crushed his head, 

Smashed on him, pierced through his temple. 

At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay ; 

At her feet he bowed, he fell ; 

Where he bowed, there he fell down dead ! 

The Last Scene 

Through the window she peered and loudly cried, 

The mother of Sisera, through the lattice, 

tf Why is his chariot so long in coming? 

Why tarry the wheels of his chariot ? " 

The wisest of her ladies answered her, 

Yea, she answered her own question, 

" Are they not finding, dividing the spoil ? 

A damsel or two for each warrior, 

A spoil of dyed stuff for Sisera, 

A spoil of dyed stuffs embroidered, 

A piece or two of embroidery for his neck ? " 

Conclusion 

So let all thine enemies perish, O Jehovah ; 

But they that love him shall be as the sun when he goeth forth in his 
might ! 



[6 4 



THE RIVER KISHON AND DEBORAH'S SONG 



SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For the rivers Jordan, Kishon, Yarmuk, Jabbok, and Anion, see 
Bible dictionaries. 

For translations, suggestions in the division of the poem, and com- 
ments, see 

American Revised Version. 

Gordon. The Poets of the Old Testament. 

FoWler. The History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 

Moore, George Foot. The International Critical Commentary, 

volume, "Judges." 
Kent. The Student's Old Testament, " Beginnings of Hebrew 

History." Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.75. 
Moulton. The Modern Reader's Bible. 



[65] 



SELECTION VI. MOUNT CARMEL AND ELIJAH 
THE TISHBITE 

i Kings xviii, 16-40 (3 Kings xviii, 16-40, Douay) 

The Plain of Sharon joins the Philistine Plain on the 
south, the Plain of Acre runs into Phoenicia on the north. 
In between lies Mount Carmel. These plains were the 
most attractive part of Palestine, and people had settled 
there long before the Hebrews arrived in the land. Per- 
haps some two thousand years before Abraham ever left 
Ur of the Chaldees, distant cousins of his had already 
traveled northwest from Arabia and established themselves 
along the coast and in the lowlands. Indeed, the name 
Canaan is supposed to mean " lowlands," and the Canaan- 
ites, therefore, took their name from the character of the 
place where they first settled, just as the Scottish High- 
landers did. These lowlanders developed a civilization 
in villages and cities, with extensive commercial interests, 
long before the Hebrews had outgrown their nomadic 
habits. The people of Tyre and Sidon, the two great cities 
of Phoenicia, were the "Yankee peddlers of those olden 
times," and as such were well known to the Greeks of 
Homer's age. In the fifteenth book of the Odyssey the 
story of Menelaus describes 

A ship of Sidon anchor'd in our port, 
Freighted with toys of every sort — 
With gold and amber chains, 

[66] 



MOUNT CARMEL AND ELIJAH THE TISHBITE 

and " fierce Achilles " was clad in Sidonian purple. This 
Sidonian, or Tyrian, purple was far-famed ; it was made 
from the shell of a fish abounding on this coast. To-day 
the traveler walking up the beach along the Plain of Acre 
finds it strewn with beautiful shells, and among them the 
spiny ones of this same fish ; but the art of making the 
purple dye is lost now. 

It was from the Phoenicians that Europe received the 
art of alphabetic writing. They were also the first nation to 
send out colonists, for it was the Phoenicians who founded 
Carthage, so celebrated in Virgil ; and from Carthage 
came Hannibal, one of the three great generals of the 
Semitic race. 1 It was from Phoenician Tyre that Solomon 
bought the lumber and borrowed the designs and the 
artificers for the great temple at Jerusalem. 2 The prophet 
Isaiah tells us that these merchantmen were the real rulers 
of nations at one time, their money power controlling 
kings. 3 But their worldly greatness was developed at the 
expense of something higher and nobler. They were more 
adventurous than their cousins the Hebrews, had made a 
few inventions and discoveries, and had gained much 
wealth. This led to luxurious, self-indulgent living and 
resulted in a religion of a very low grade. 

The original Semitic religion was a very pure nature 
worship ; the sun and moon and stars had called out the 

1 The other two were Tiglath-pileser, the Assyrian, and Nebuchad- 
nezzar, the Babylonian. For contrast between the Aryan and the Semitic 
genius, see James F. McCurdy, History, Prophecy and the Monuments. 

2 The Hebrews did not show originality in their architecture or in 
sculpture and painting, as did their neighbors, the Assyrians, Egyptians, 
and Greeks, and to a very slight degree the Phoenicians. The fine art 
which absorbed their originality was poetry. 

3 Isa. xxiii, 8. 

[671 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

admiration and reverence of those early nomads, living in 
the open and traveling so much by night ; and when they 
settled down in the city of Ur they built a temple to the 
moon, believing there must be some great mysterious 
power behind the night. The priests used to ascend to 
the top of the temple every night to observe the stars, 
singing a hymn at midnight before they came down. This 
was the beginning of astronomy, and such worship was the 
seed of noble thoughts and deep reverential feeling. An- 
other city worshiped the sun, and such hymns as the 
following formed part of their worship, scarcely below 
some of our own poetry in loftiness of thought. 

O lord, illuminator of darkness, who revealest the face of heaven, 
Merciful God, who dost lift up the lowly, protect the weak. 

To thy light all the great gods look up. 
All the Annunaki look up to thee. 

All mankind thou guidest like a single being ; 
Expectantly, with raised head they look up to the sunlight. 

When thou dost appear, they rejoice and exult ; 

Thou art the light for the most distant ends of the heavens. 

The standard for the wide earth, 

The multitudes look up to thee with joy. 

But down in Phoenicia the purer forms of nature wor- 
ship had deteriorated sadly into a superstitious fear of un- 
seen spirits, which the people believed inhabited rocks and 
springs and trees as well as the heavens. These spirits 
were called Baals or^ Baalim, and their priests performed 
all sorts of barbarous rites to appease their anger, even 
resorting to cutting themselves with knives in order to 

[68] 



MOUNT CARMEL AND ELIJAH THE TISHBITE 

awaken the interest and compassion of these gods. It was 
very easy for the Israelites to fall into the same super- 
stitious feelings when they associated with these people. 
The ease and luxury of life on the lowlands were not con- 
ducive to the plain living and high thinking of life in the 
hills. The pure worship of the one spiritual God, Jehovah, 
degenerated to the level of heathendom ; and when king 
Ahab married Jezebel, the daughter of the king of Tyre, 
who became the ruling spirit of Northern Israel, she 
brought her gods with her and hundreds of priests of Baal 
into the land. 

The great prophets came from the hills and the desert, 
those high and lonely places where they thought out pro- 
foundly the steps in true, reverential religious conceptions. 
Abraham did this on Mount Moriah and Moses by the 
burning bush, Amos in the wilderness of Tekoa and 
Isaiah on Mount Zion. The first great prophet after the 
Hebrews returned from Egypt was Elijah. He came from 
Gilead near the desert and was half nomad — an interesting 
person clothed in skins and wearing a girdle of leather. 1 
The modern fellah of the desert, with his leathern girdle 
and hairy breast and arms, is said to be the exact portrait of 
Elijah the Tishbite of old. This strange man Elijah would 
suddenly appear and just as suddenly disappear, daring to 
walk right into the presence of the king himself and de- 
liver his message without warning and without wavering. 
He was an epoch-making character, and the stories that 
have come down to us about him are great stories. Here 
we have just the right kind of hero to stir the imagina- 
tion of primitive people. He was enveloped in mystery, 

1 2 Kings i, 8. 

• [69] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

/ 

appearing unannounced from somewhere, no one knew 

just where ; vanishing abruptly ; never saying " by your 
leave" for anything he did ; of wonderful physical strength 
and endurance, outrunning the king's chariot for a stretch 
of twelve miles ; on briefest notice putting a hundred miles 
between himself and the wrath of the queen ; enduring 
the long siege of famine with the help of the ravens 
and a little trickling brook with which he alone was 
acquainted. 1 

Elijah's message to the people was that Jehovah, the 
spiritual God of Moses and Samuel and David, was the 
only true God, that the Baalim were false gods, and that 
the children of Israel were doing wickedly to indulge in 
such superstitious worship, which led to ignoble rather than 
lofty thoughts. Elijah was even bold enough one day to 
challenge these priests of Baal to a religious duel. He led 
them with a crowd of people up to Mount Carmel, the high 
promontory lying between the plains and overlooking them. 
There he called upon his God and they called upon their 
gods, to see which one would really answer. He knew his 
God was real and controlled the lightning, and so he quietly 
waited until the evening and with contemptuous sarcasm 
mocked the priests of Baal, who resorted to slashing them- 
selves with knives and lances and screaming to their gods, 
in order to attract their attention. Tennyson thus describes 
this scene, in his " Palace of Art " : 

One was the Tishbite whom the raven fed, 

As when he stood on Carmel-steeps 
With one arm stretch'd out bare, and mock'd and said, 

' Come, cry aloud — he sleeps ! ' 

1 I Kings xvii, 1-7 ; xviii, 45 ; xix, 1-4. 

[70] 



MOUNT CARMEL AND ELIJAH THE TISHBITE 

Tall, eager, lean, and strong, his cloak wind-borne 

Behind, his forehead heavenly-bright 
From the clear marble pouring glorious scorn, 

Lit as with inner light. 

Mount Carmel, the scene of this famous story, stands 
out on the coast — a solitary sentinel looking over the sea. 
On Mount Carmel the grateful moisture of the clouds first 
descends. There fall the first and the best of the rains, 
before they are dried up by the thirsty land, and so the 
mountain is clothed in green the year round. Its very 
name means "the Garden," and in ancient times vine- 
yards and orchards adorned its slopes. The Old Testament 
writers constantly used it as the figure of human beauty or 
the symbol of God's lavish bounty. To-day the mountain 
is mostly a wild, open jungle, but a little imagination can 
easily restore the picture of " the excellency of Carmel." 
This " high place " had long been used as a sanctuary, and 
now Jehovah and Baal both claimed it. Commanding a 
view of the whole land (north, of Mount Hermon; east, 
over the wheat fields of Esdraelon ; south, over the orchards 
of Sharon to the hills of Samaria), it was a fitting place for 
the followers of two rival deities to settle their dispute. 
" The awful debate, whether Jehovah or Baal was supreme 
lord of the elements, was fought out for a full day in face 
of one of the most sublime prospects of earth and sea and 
heaven. ... It was in the face of that miniature universe 
that the Deity who was character was vindicated as Lord, 
against the Deity who was not." 1 

So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him ; and Ahab went 
to meet Elijah. And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that 

1 Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 340, 341. 

[71] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Ahab said unto him, Is it thou, thou troubler of Israel? And he 
answered, I have not troubled Israel ; but thou, and thy father's 
house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of Jehovah, and 
thou hast followed the Baalim. Now therefore send, and gather to 
me all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four 
hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah four hundred, 
that eat at Jezebel's table. 

So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the 
prophets together unto Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near unto 
all the people, and said, How long go ye limping between the two 
sides? if Jehovah be God, follow him ; but if Baal, then follow him. 
And the people answered him not a word. Then said Elijah unto 
the people, I, even I only, am left a prophet of Jehovah ; but Baal's 
prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them therefore give 
us two bullocks ; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, 
and cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, and put no fire under ; 
and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on the wood, and put no 
fire under. And call ye on the name of your god, and I will call on 
the name of Jehovah : and the God that answereth by fire, let him 
be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken. 

And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bul- 
lock for yourselves, and dress it first ; for ye are many ; and call 
on the name of your god, but put no fire under. And they took the 
bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the 
name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. 
But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped 
about the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that 
Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud ; for he is a god : either he 
is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is on a journey, or peradventure 
he sleepeth and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut them- 
selves after their manner with knives and lances, till the blood gushed 
out upon them. And it was so, when midday was past, that they 
prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening oblation ; 
but there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. 

And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me ; and all 
the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of Jehovah 

[72] 



MOUNT CARMEL AND ELIJAH THE TISHBITE 

that was thrown down. And Elijah took twelve stones, according 
to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the 
word of Jehovah came, saying, Israel shall be thy name. And with 
the stones he built an altar in the name of Jehovah ; and he made a 
trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of 
seed. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, 
and laid it on the wood. And he said, Fill four jars with water, and 
pour it on the burnt-offering, and on the wood. And he said, Do it 
the second time ; and they did it the second time. And he said, Do 
it the third time ; and they did it the third time. And the water ran 
round about the altar ; and he filled the trench also with water. And 
it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening oblation, 
that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, O Jehovah, the God of 
Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou 
art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done 
all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Jehovah, hear me, that this 
people may know that thou, Jehovah, art God, and that thou hast 
turned their heart back again. Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and 
consumed the burnt-offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the 
dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all 
the people saw it, they fell on their faces : and they said, Jehovah, 
he is God ; Jehovah, he is God. And Elijah said unto them, Take 
the prophets of Baal ; let not one of them escape. And they took 
them ; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew 
them there. 



SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 
For Mount Carmel, the Plain of Acre, and Tyre and Sidon, see 

Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 
Kent. Biblical Geography and History. 
Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation. 
Thomson. The Land and the Book. 
Hazard. A Brief Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. 
Baedeker. Palestine and Syria. 
Bible dictionaries. 

[73] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

For Tyrian purple, see 

Baedeker. Palestine and Syria. 

For nature worship and the Baalim, see 

Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, art. "Baal." 
Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 

For Elijah and his character, see 

Fowler. History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 
Bible dictionaries. 



[74] 




Underwood & Underwood 

MT. CARMEL AND THE PLAIN OF ACRE 



SELECTION VII. MOUNT CARMEL AND 
THE RAINS 

i Kings xvii, 1-7 (3 Kings xvii, 1-7, Douay) ; 1 Kings xviii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 
41-46 (3 Kings xviii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 41-46, Douay) 

Mount Carmel is one of the most significant parts of 
the Holy Land, the most striking natural feature on the 
western side of Palestine, the one bold headland jutting 
out into the Mediterranean. It is eighteen hundred and 
ten feet high at its highest point near the sea, running 
southeast and northwest for about twelve miles and sloping 
gradually downward. From its summit there is a mag- 
nificent view of the whole land. It gathers the moisture 
freely because of its height and situation near the sea. 
Owing to the heavy dew which falls every night Mount 
Carmel is one of the few spots in Palestine that remain 
green throughout the whole year. A perfect garden of 
foliage lifting itself above the wheat fields of the plain, 
with vineyards and orchards and groves of oaks, it was 
to the imagination of the Hebrew poet like the Ideal 
Maiden's tresses : 

Thy waist is like a heap of wheat 

Set about with lilies. 

Thy head upon thee is like Carmel 

And the hair of thy head like purple ; 

The king is held captive in the tresses thereof. 

How fair and how pleasant art thou, 

O love, for delights ! 1 

1 Song of Songs vii, 2, 5, 6. 

[75] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

It became a symbol of fertility and blessing, of the kind 
of prosperity Israel longed for, sure and constant amidst 
the great variableness of the fickle climate, the frequent 
droughts, and the fear of famine. It stood out much more 
prominently than the lowlands as the Hebrew ideal of 
the Land of Heart's Desire, for it was high up, affording 
visions, so dear to the best life and thought of the nation. 
It was always a sacred retreat ; even before the Hebrews 
found it, its caverns and oak groves offered seclusion for 
those who wished to meditate. Here Elijah brought the 
people to try to raise their thoughts of God above the 
common level, 1 and here the Shunammite woman knew 
she would find Elisha when she was in distress. 2 To-day 
there is a monastery on the mountain, harboring eighteen 
or twenty Carmelite monks. This order, which took its 
name from Carmel itself, sprang up in the twelfth cen- 
tury, was confirmed by the Pope, and spread over Europe. 
But the visions of the Hebrew prophets were not of the 
type of spirituality divorced from things of earth which 
the Middle Ages cherished. Heaven and earth were very 
close to each other in the Hebrew mind, and their concep- 
tion of Jehovah was of a great God who cared for the life 
and health and happiness of his people on earth. Elijah 
believed this and stood for two great principles : first, that 
God cares for the rights of the common citizen ; and, sec- 
ond, that people should be loyal to such a God. The one 
involves politics and the other religion ; the whole history 
of the Hebrews was an effort to show that the two could 
not be separated. Because real happiness on earth is the 
result of a well-conducted government, the prophets stood 

1 Selection VI. 2 2 Kings iv. 

[76] 



MOUNT CARMEL AND THE RAINS 

for civic ethics and became counselors to kings. Because 
such prosperity is knit up with the economic life of peo- 
ple, they studied not only "the signs of the times" politi- 
cally, but the signs of nature as well, warning the people 
to be provident, to plow and sow and harvest as skillful 
farmers do, 1 to plant their vineyards with care, 2 to build 
cisterns that did not leak, 3 and not to put their wages into 
a bag with holes. 4 They believed, indeed, in a great God, 
a Providence whose thoughts were higher than man's 
thoughts as the heavens are higher than the earth, 5 but 
a Providence who helps those who help themselves by 
reflecting upon nature's ways. 

Consequently Elijah was a weather prophet. The eco- 
nomic life of any people depends very largely upon the rain 
and moisture. Hot, dry winds will very soon occasion 
drought, spoil crops, and cause famine. All countries are 
dependent ultimately for their prosperity upon the crops 
and the crops upon the weather. Many of the fluctuations 
of Wall Street are due to an abundant wheat crop or a poor 
yield of corn. Thus business man and farmer and the gov- 
ernment in Washington all watch with anxiety the weather 
bureau. In ancient times they had no weather bureaus to 
warn the people of a sirocco 6 or a storm from the sea, 7 

1 Isa. xxviii, 23-29. 3 Isa. xxii, 9-1 1 ; Jer. ii, 13 ; xiv, 3. 

2 Isa. v. 4 Hag. i, 6. 5 Isa. lvii, 8, 9. 

6 " The only dreadful wind in Palestine is the east wind, because it 
blows from the inland desert and brings excessive heat. The Arabic 
word for ' east ' is sherk, and so for ' east wind ' the Arab says sherk-iyeh. 
From this we get, by corruption, our word sirocco (or sherokkoh)." — 
Grant, The Peasantry of Palestine, p. 25. 

7 " The rain is derived almost entirely from winds blowing in from 
the Mediterranean Sea." — Huntington, Palestine and its Transforma- 
tion, p. 36. 

177] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

but they had the prophets, and they often did as well. At 
any rate, Elijah could tell what nature had in store, and he 
was held in great reverence because of this power. He was 
a man of the desert and knew the indications of those fear- 
ful drying east winds. He climbed the summit of Carmel 
and could tell the first signs of a storm when the west 
wind blew. 

Palestine is one of the countries which have a dry season 
and a rainy season, like our own Pacific Coast. The winter, 
from November until April, is the rainy season, and the 
crops are very dependent upon the heavy rains of fall and 
spring, " the former and the latter rains," because there is 
scarcely a drop during the six months of summer. When 
the winter rains fail there is often a famine, and a succes- 
sion of several years of drought brings havoc to the people. 
Such a famine occurred in Ahab's reign — a three years' 
siege of drought. The king was concerned for himself and 
his horses and the many priests of Baal whom his wife 
Jezebel had imported. Elijah was concerned for the wel- 
fare of the people ; in his estimation a king who did not 
hold his kingship as a trust for the good of every subject 
was not worthy to be a king. 

And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the sojourners of Gilead, said 
unto Ahab, As Jehovah, the God of Israel, liveth, before whom I 
stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to 
my word. And the word of Jehovah came unto him, saying, Get thee 
hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, 
that is before the Jordan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the 
brook ; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he 
went and did according unto the word of Jehovah ; for he went and 
dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before the Jordan. And the ravens 
brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in 

[78] 



MOUNT CARMEL AND THE RAINS 

the evening ; and he drank of the brook. And it came to pass after 
a while, that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. 

And it came to pass after many days, that the word of Jehovah 
came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, Go, show thyself unto 
Ahab ; and I will send rain upon the earth. And Elijah went to show 
himself unto Ahab. And the famine was sore in Samaria. And Ahab 
said unto Obadiah, Go through the land, unto all the fountains of 
water and unto all the brooks : peradventure we may find grass and 
save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts. So 
they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab 
went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself. 

And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink ; for there 
is the sound of abundance of rain. So Ahab went up to eat and to 
drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel ; and he bowed him- 
self down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees. And 
he said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went 
up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again 
seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, 
Behold, there ariseth a cloud out of the sea, as small as a man's hand. 
And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Make ready thy chariot, and get 
thee down, that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass in a little 
while, that the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there 
was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel : and the hand 
of Jehovah was on Elijah ; and he girded up his loins, and ran before 
Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 
For the seasons, rains, dews, and winds of Palestine, see 
Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 
Kent. Biblical Geography and History. 
Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation. 
Baedeker. Palestine and Syria. 
Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For Elijah and the priiiciples he stood for, see 

Fowler. History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 

[79] 



SELECTION VIII. THE THUNDERSTORM PSALM 
Ps. xxix (xxviii, Douay) 

Storms come up very suddenly in Palestine. We know 
in our own country how after a long, dry period a crashing 
thunderstorm will break the spell. Often it is accompanied 
by a wind which does much damage, tearing the trees up 
by the roots and even taking off the roofs of houses. The 
Psalmist describes such a storm and the grandeur of it in 
his land. " Various poetical storm-pieces have come down 
from oriental antiquity, the most justly celebrated being 
the description of the oncoming flood in the second Del- 
uge-Tablet and Imru'1-Kais' brilliant picture of the light- 
ning at the close of his Mu'allaka : 

' Friend, thou seest the lightning. Mark where it wavereth, 
Gleaming like fingers twisted, clasped in the cloud-rivers. 
Like a lamp new-lighted, so is the flash of it, 
Trimmed by a hermit nightly pouring oil-sesame.' 

But neither of these leads us so truly into the living spirit 
of the storm as the swift, crashing strokes of the Hebrew 
Psalm." 1 

Nature lovers are not afraid; they often seek a high 
hill when a storm is gathering, to watch its progress in silent 
reverence ; for a storm is one of the great, awe-inspiring 
sights of nature. The Hebrew poet was evidently standing 
on one of the peaks of the Lebanons, where he could watch 
the clouds gathering over the Mediterranean Sea. He 

1 Gordon, The Poets of the Old Testament. 

[so] 



THE THUNDERSTORM PSALM 

imagined that those fleecy shapes, piled one above another, 
were the fitting background for a choir of angels singing 
" Glory to Jehovah." And so he sang : 

Ascribe unto Jehovah, O ye angels of God, 
Ascribe unto Jehovah, glory and strength, 
Ascribe unto Jehovah the glory due unto his name; 
Worship Jehovah in the beauty of holiness. 

But blacker and blacker grew the clouds. He could hear 
the distant roar of their thunder, and he imagined this to 
be the voice of Jehovah himself above the sea, answering 
the angels as they praised his power. And so he sang this 
second stanza : 

The voice of Jehovah is upon the waters ; 
The God of glory thundereth. 

Nearer and nearer came the storm, the dark clouds rolling 
up one on top of another, the thunder growing louder. 

Jehovah's voice on the mighty waters ! 

Jehovah's voice in strength, Jehovah's voice in majesty ! 

Then suddenly the storm breaks upon the mountains of 
Lebanon, tearing the great cedars in pieces, breaking off 
their limbs and sending them scudding down the hillsides as 
a young calf skips in glee or as young wild animals gambol 
about. The lightning plays beautifully in the sky, streaking 
the heavens with light and striking swiftly to the earth. 

Jehovah's voice shatters the cedars, 
Jehovah shatters the cedars of Lebanon. 
He maketh Lebanon to skip like a calf 
And Sirion 1 as a young wild ox. 
Jehovah's voice cleaveth the rocks, 
Jehovah cleaveth them with blade of fire. 

1 Another name for Hermon. 

[81] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Then as the poet stands there viewing the scene of de- 
struction he sees the storm flee off to the east, the wind 
licking up the dry sand of the wilderness and whirling it 
about in great gusts like the dust storms of our prairies. 

Jehovah's voice lasheth the desert, 
Jehovah lasheth the desert of Kadesh. 

Looking about him now, he perceives the havoc in the for- 
ests where the lightning has struck, where many trees with 
their bare trunks lie stripped of branches here and there. 

Jehovah's voice shivers the oaks 
And strippeth the forests bare. 1 

After such a storm is over, a remarkable stillness often 
appears to settle down upon the landscape, a hush and quiet 
as if the great Creator were whispering peace to every 
troubled creature, renewing again in every heart faith in 
the eternal Power that sits supreme over all. And so the 
poet wrote his final stanza, 

Jehovah sits as King at the storm ! 
Yea, Jehovah sitteth as King forever. 
Jehovah will give strength to his people ; 
Jehovah will bless his people with peace. 2 

This is more than magnificent imagery and magnificent 
poetry ; it is one of the finest expressions of reverence 
and faith. The modern note is touched here, for we of 
the occidental world have learned to some extent to wor- 
ship God in the open, as people did in ancient times. One 
of our very modern American poets has recently expressed 

1 Another line has been added here by a later writer using the poem 
for a temple hymn. 

2 Perhaps the first and last stanzas were added for use in the temple 
service, but they form a fitting framework for the thought of the poet. 

[82] 



THE THUNDERSTORM PSALM 

much the same thought as does this Psalm in his little poem 
" The Place of Peace." 1 

At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky 
And flinging the clouds and the towers by, 
Is a place of central calm ; 
So here in the roar of mortal things, 
I have a place where my spirit sings, 
In the hollow of God's Palm. 

But simply to place the one by the side of the other is 
sufficient to reveal the exceptional grandeur and dignity, 
even stateliness, of the Hebrew Psalm compared with the 
modern poem. " The language of the Psalms nowhere 
reaches such heights of natural grandeur as in this sub- 
lime Song of the Thunders." 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For interpretation of this psalm, see 

Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land, chap, iv, " The 

Scenery of the Land and its Reflection in the Bible," p. ioo. 
International Critical Commentary, " Psalms." 
Gordon. The Poets of the Old Testament. 

For the full translation of Imru'l-Kais' 1 Arabic poe?7i, see 

Library of the World's Best Literature, art. "Arabic Literature." 

For the worship of God in the open air, see 
Bryant, William Cullen. Forest Hymn. 
1 Edwin Markham. 



[83] 



SELECTION IX. MOUNT HERMON, THE LAND 
OF SNOW 

Prov. xxv, 13 ; Hos. xiii, 3; Hos. vi, 4; Hos. xiv, 6 

" The ascent of Hermon cannot be undertaken before 
May. The expedition requires a whole day and is very 
fatiguing. The start should be made before sunrise. A 
guide is necessary. Provisions and water should not be 
forgotten. Those who intend to spend a night in a tent 
on the top should take a supply of fuel. Travelers must 
see on the previous day that the horses and their gear are 
fit for this unusually rough work, and that they are thor- 
oughly well fed and rested. The view is of vast extent, 
embracing a great part of Syria." Thus reads the guide- 
book, and it sounds like real climbing. 

One Arabic name for Hermon means " mountain of the 
white-haired," or "snow mountain," and another "the chief 
of mountains." It looms almost ten thousand feet above 
the sea and in the winter is covered with masses of snow 
which last even into the summer months, remaining all 
the year round in the deep ravines. Saint Jerome tells 
us that in olden times the snow was collected and used to 
cool the beverages of the wealthy. Perhaps it was used as 
a cooling drink for the harvesters, as is indicated by one of 
the old Hebrew proverbs : 

As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, 

So is a faithful messenger to them that send him ; 

For he refresheth the soul of his masters. 

[84] 




Underwood & Underwood 



THE SUMMIT OF MT. HERMON 



MOUNT HERMON, THE LAND OF SNOW 

The steep snow fields of this mountain look admirably 
adapted to tobogganing, and for hunting there are bears, 
foxes, and wolves. When one reaches the top, one finds 
three peaks hemming in a massive mountain plateau, twenty 
miles long from northeast to southwest. Indeed, one of the 
names for the mountain as it lies stretched out at full 
length is Jebel-esh-Sheik, or " Old Man of the Mountains." 
This is something like our humble "Mans-field" of the 
Green Mountains of Vermont, with the three peaks, fore- 
head, nose, and chin, several miles apart. Vineyards can 
be seen up to a height of about five thousand feet; then 
the dwarf green tragacanth bushes and the almond appear. 
Plums, cherries, and pears grow on its slopes, and juniper 
bushes are numerous, while higher up the stunted shrubs 
of the oriental steppes cover the ground. 

. "The dew of Hermon" referred to in the Bible 1 comes 
from the condensing of the moisture from the breezes off 
the Mediterranean Sea against the high, cold peaks of the 
mountain. The evaporating dew of the morning produces 
a heavy mist. Have you ever stayed all night on the top 
of a mountain and looked down in the early dawn upon 
the widespread view below, with the mists in the valleys 
enveloping the land, drifting and scudding along, making 
ribbons of filmy white on a background of green ? The 
rising sun drives away this dream in the seriousness of 
the day's heat. Mists like these are a boon to Palestine in 
the hot, dry summertime. Every green thing is refreshed 
by the moisture. All the leaves and blossoms lift up their 
heads and join with the farmer in blessing Providence. 
These mists and dews were so refreshing that to the mind 

1 Hos. xiii, 3 ; vi, 4. 

[85] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

of Hosea, the poet-prophet of the Northern Kingdom, they 
were the best figure for the restored and forgiven soul. 

The melting snows at the summit of Mount Hermon 
are the sources of the Jordan River. The mountain itself 
is one of " the roots of Lebanon" 1 ; it is the highest peak 
of the eastern range which runs off into plateaus east of the 
Jordan. This is supposed to have been Jesus' retreat just 
before he left Galilee for his final journey to Jerusalem. 2 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For Mount Hennon and its names, see 

Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 

Kent. Biblical Geography and History. 

Thomson. The Land and the Book. 

Tristram. The Natural History of the Bible. 

Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine. 

Baldensperger, P. J. The Immovable East. Small, Maynard 

& Company, New York. $2.00. 
Baedeker. Palestine and Syria. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For a beautiful colored illustration, see the frontispiece in 
Hazard. A Brief Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. 

1 Hos. xiv, 5. 2 Luke ix, 28 ff. 



[86] 



SELECTION X. THE SMELL OF LEBANON 
Hos. xiv, 4-7 

The cedars of Lebanon have always been renowned ; 
they were magnificent trees, in size somewhat like our red- 
woods of California, but not so tall. Isaiah speaks of them 
as "the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up" 1 
and "the glory of Lebanon." 2 The Psalmist says that 
"the righteous shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." 3 
Amos compares the tall, strong Amorite to these great 
trees, " the Amorite, whose height was like the height of 
the cedars." 4 Ezekiel likened the warrior Assyrian to " a 
cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a forest- 
like shade, and of high stature ; and its top was among 
the thick boughs. 5 All the birds of the heavens made 
their nests in its boughs." 6 Masts were made from these 
tall trees — "they have taken a cedar from Lebanon to 
make a mast for thee." 7 

This was the majestic imagery of the Old Testament 
used to describe these trees, and notwithstanding the fact 
that there are very few of them left to-day, and those 
much smaller and more gnarled than the ancient ones, we 
know that the language is not extravagant, for at the pres- 
ent time, in localities where the trees attain the normal 

1 Isa. ii, 13. 5 Ezek. xxxi, 3. 

2 Isa. xxxv, 2 ; lx, 13. 6 Ezek. xxxi, 6. 

3 Ps. xcii, 12. 7 Ezek. xxvii, 5. 

4 Amos ii, 9. 

[87] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

size, a board could be cut from sixty to eighty feet long 
and from six to eight feet wide at the bottom, tapering to 
two or more at the top, and beams could be had of almost 
any thickness desired. Some of these trees grow to be a 
hundred feet high. 

This particular cedar (Cedrus libani) belongs to the coni- 
fers. It resembles the larch very closely and has dark 
evergreen leaves and great cones as large as a goose's 
egg. It spreads out its massive branches in a very charac- 
teristic way, horizontally like a roof ; some of its finest 
specimens look like majestic oaks. The wood of the Leb- 
anon cedar is almost indestructible. Dry rot and borers 
do not trouble it. It is hard, close-grained, and sound to 
the heart. There is abundant testimony in history as to its 
durability. Pliny says that the cedar roof of the temple of 
Diana at Ephesus lasted four hundred years, and we know 
that the temple of Apollo at Utica endured eleven hun- 
dred and seventy years. Of course these trees were of the 
greatest value for building purposes, for in addition to 
their size and durability the wood is of a pleasing whitish 
color, is easily carved, and is susceptible of a high polish. 
The Phoenicians cut great quantities of it, sending the 
lumber down into Egypt and to other neighboring coun- 
tries. The three temples at Jerusalem were finished in 
this wood, as were also the palaces of David and Sol- 
omon. The Arabs still call these trees "the cedars of 
the Lord." 

To-day only a few descendants of these magnificent 
trees remain. They are not to be found at all on Mount 
Hermon, and only a few of them on the western ridge of 
the Lebanons and farther north. But in Bible times there 

[88] 



THE SMELL OF LEBANON 

were large forests covering the Lebanon region. 1 Perhaps 
so much reckless cutting of these and other forests had 
something to do with the present treeless and barren con- 
dition of much of the land. 

The cedar of Lebanon has a most abundant balsamic 
juice exuding from every pore. Great beads of the fra- 
grant resin stand out on every branch, and if a cut is 
made in the bark, it runs out very freely. If two branches 
meet and rub against each other, they are cemented by the 
juice, so that they grow fast together. It is so fragrant 
that ''the smell of Lebanon" became a well-known phrase, 
and the perfume of the garments of the Ideal Maiden was 
likened to the fragrance of these cedar trees. 2 

This tree was the favorite of the prophets and poets of 
Israel. Hosea, the poet-prophet of the north, who was 
steeped in the secrets of nature, loved this tree. His was 
a hard life, full of bitter experiences for a very sensitive 
man, but through them all he evidently sought comfort 
out of doors in communion with the fields and the woods, 
God's messengers of health to soul and mind as well as 
body. In later life, when he had found the harbor of 
peace after his rough voyage of continual struggle with 
the sin of the world, he could think of no better way to 
express the love of God to man in forgiving and forget- 
ting all the past than in figures drawn from the flowers 
and the trees. 

1 "They probably covered all the subalpine peaks of Lebanon. It is 
also extremely probable that the cedar flourished in those days on Her- 
mon and Anti-Lebanon." — G. E. Post, in Hastings's Bible Dictionary. 
" Of the cedars there remain only seven groups. In all there are about 
four hundred trees." L.G.Leary, Syria, the Land of Lebanon, pp. 169,170. 

2 Song of Songs iv, 11. 

[89] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

I will heal their backsliding, 

I will love them freely ; 

For Mine anger is turned away from them. 

I will be as the dew unto Israel ; 

He shall blossom as the lily, 

And strike his roots deep as Lebanon ; 

His branches shall spread, 

And his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, 

And his smell as Lebanon. 

They shall return and dwell in His shadow, 

They shall live well-watered as a garden, 

Till they flourish like the vine, 

And be fragrant like the wine of Lebanon. 1 

Dr. George Adam Smith, the Scotch scholar, who has 
done more than any other living man in the study of the 
geography of Palestine, thus interprets the reference to the 
dew and the smell of Lebanon — " the smell of clear moun- 
tain air with the scent of the pines upon it. No wonder 
that our northern prophet painted the blessed future in the 
poetry of the Mountain — its air, its dew, and its trees. . . . 
With his home in the north, and weary of everything arti- 
ficial, whether it were idols or puppet-kings, Hosea turns to 
the * glory of Lebanon ' as it lies, untouched by human tool 
or art, fresh and full of peace from God's own hand. . . . 
His sacraments are the open air, the mountain breeze, the 
dew, the vine, the lilies, the pines ; and what God asks 
of men are life and health, fragrance and fruitfulness, be- 
neath the shadow and the dew of His Presence." 2 

This is the modern message of the saved man, the 
healthy, wholesome, out-of-doors message, the virile, up- 
lifting, social message. 

1 Hos. xiv, 4-7, G. A. Smith's translation. 

2 Smith, The Book of the Twelve Prophets. 

[90] 



THE SMELL OF LEBANON 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For the Lebanons and the cedars of Lebanon, see 

Tristram. Natural History of the Bible. 
Baedeker. Palestine and Syria. 
Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible. 
Kent. Biblical Geography and History. 
Thomson. The Land and the Book. 

Leary, L. G. Syria, the Land of Lebanon. McBride, Nast and 
Company, New York. $1.25. 

For a thorough discussion of the question of the deforestation of the 
Lebanons affecting the climate and coiidition of the land, see 

Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation, pp. 253-268. 
Fernow, Bernhard E. History of Forestry, pp. 9, 10. 

For interpretation of Hosed 's message, see 

Smith, G. A. The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. I, chap. xx. 
George H. Doran Company, New York. 2 vols., 50 cents each. 



t9i] 



SELECTION XI. NAAMAN'S SCORN 
OF THE JORDAN 

2 Kings v, i-i9a (4 Kings v, i-i9a, Douay) 

The stories of early folklore are the natural, nai've ex- 
pressions of the elemental feelings of the human race. 
Love and hate, joy and grief, have not been toned down 
to the proprieties of civilization ; they burst out in terse 
and telling invective, rapturous adoration, or heart-breaking 
distress at the call of the moment, lacking all self-con- 
sciousness and therefore without affectation. Scorn is an 
elemental feeling and irony or sarcasm its expression. We 
are governed largely by our dislikes and antipathies. Cul- 
ture and civilization teach us to control these, or at least 
to smooth them down for the comfort of those with 
whom we associate. In later literature all these feelings 
are more subtly expressed, satire takes the place of out- 
spoken irony and sarcasm, and even love's passion is 
properly timed and attuned to the occasion. But a part of 
the charm of the early folk-story is the natural, unpremedi- 
tated expression of feelings common to the race. In the 
groups of Elijah and Elisha stories we have scorn delight- 
fully expressed in the tersest kind of sarcasm. What could 
be more refreshing than Elijah's stinging comments on 
the indifference of the god Baal? " Perhaps he is musing, 
or is gone aside or is on a journey, or peradventure he 
sleepeth and must be awaked ! " 

[92] 



NAAMAN'S SCORN OF THE JORDAN 

In the Elisha story of Naaman the leper, we have 
another sarcastic stroke, dealt out this time against the 
innocent Jordan River. A man brought up in Damas- 
cus, accustomed to bathe in the pure, clear waters of the 
beautiful Abana, whose very name means coolness and 
refreshment, was told to go and dip himself in the muddy, 
coffee-colored Jordan, whose slimy banks are haunted by 
lizards and snakes. It was as if a New Englander, brought 
up as a boy to wade and swim and fish in the clear, sweet 
mountain streams that flow down from the hills of New 
Hampshire, should go out to the Missouri River, the " Big 
Muddy " of America, and be told that a bath in its murky 
water would cleanse him inside and out. Imagine his 
scorn! Such scorn was Naaman's, vigorously expressed. 

But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I 
thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the 
name of Jehovah his God, and wave his hand over the place, and 
recover the leper. Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of 
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel ? may I not wash in 
them and be clean ? So he turned, and went away in a rage. 

In reading the story be sure to get the setting. There are 
several striking scenes : the important Syrian general dis- 
covering that he has the dread disease of leprosy, and the 
home scene of distress, when the little Hebrew waiting maid, 
who has been carried off a captive in the last war with Israel, 
overhears the laments of her mistress. If any such dire 
calamity had come to her house in Israel, the first thing 
they would have done would be to go to the great good 
prophet, Elisha, for had he not been able to do wonders for 
the people ? He had brought the Shunammite's boy to life * 

1 2 Kings iv, 8-37. 

[93] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

and had sweetened the bad waters of Jericho 1 and had 
taken the poison out of the pottage. 2 He seemed to be 
all-wise and to help everyone out of his trouble. Surely 
he could help her master in his distress. Then the whis- 
pered counsel with each other (the mistress and the 
master), the willingness to catch at any straw to save 
life, the messenger sent to the king of Syria, the ready 
response with letters of introduction to the king of 
Israel and a great train of attendants fitted out with 
presents, and the royal caravan made ready for the jour- 
ney ; 3 the arrival of this richly caparisoned troop in the 
streets of Samaria ; the curiosity and conjectures of every 
Hebrew on the street as to why such a visit should be 
made ; the panic of the king in his palace, suspecting a 
deep-laid plot for a quarrel and another war ; the message 
from Elisha to send Naaman down to him ; the conster- 
nation of the neighbors as this great personage came with 
his cavalcade of horses and chariots and stood in front of 
the humble cottage of the prophet ; then, finally, Naaman's 
consternation and wrath when Elisha, instead of paying 
him decent respect, simply sent his servant out and told 
him to go and wash in the muddy Jordan river ! But after- 
wards, his listening to the common sense of his servants — 
" If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest 
thou not have done it ? " — and the humbling of his pride 
when he wades out into the mud and makes the plunge ; 
last of all, his gratitude to Jehovah, Elisha's God. He 
would still be obliged for political reasons to go through 

1 2 Kings ii, 19-22. 

2 2 Kings iv, 38-41. 

8 See Selection II, account of the caravans. 

[94] 



NAAMAN'S SCORN OF THE JORDAN 

the forms of worship to the Syrian god Rimmon, but in 
his heart Jehovah would be enthroned. 

Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a 
great man with his master, and honorable, because by him Jehovah 
had given victory unto Syria : he was also a mighty man of valor, 
but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out in bands, and 
had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maiden ; and 
she waited on Naaman's wife. And she said unto her mistress, Would 
that my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria ! then would 
he recover him of his leprosy. And one went in, and told his lord, 
saying, Thus and thus said the maiden that is of the land of Israel. 
And the king of Syria said, Go now, and I will send a letter unto 
the king of Israel. And he departed, and took with him ten talents 
of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment. 
And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, And now 
when this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have sent Naaman my 
servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy. And it 
came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he 
rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, 
that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? 
but consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me. 

And it was so, when Elisha the man of God heard that the king 
of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Where- 
fore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he 
shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with 
his horses and with his chariots, and stood at the door of the house 
of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and 
wash in the Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to 
thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went 
away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, 
and stand, and call on the name of Jehovah his God, and wave his 
hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abanah and 
Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel ? 
may I not wash in them, and be clean ? So he turned and went away 
in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and 
said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, 

[95] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he 
saith to thee, Wash, and be clean ? Then went he down, and dipped 
himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man 
of God ; and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, 
and he was clean. 

And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and 
came, and stood before him ; and he said, Behold now, I know that 
there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel : now therefore, I pray 
thee, take a present of thy servant. But he said, As Jehovah liveth, 
before whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take 
it; but he refused. And Naaman said, If not, yet, I pray thee, let there 
be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth ; for thy servant 
will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other 
gods, but unto Jehovah. In this thing Jehovah pardon thy servant : 
when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, 
and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, 
when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, Jehovah pardon thy 
servant in this thing. And he said unto him, Go in peace. 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For the Jordan River, see 

Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land, chap, xxii, "The 

Jordan Valley." 
Kent. Biblical Geography and History. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For Naaman, leprosy, Damascus, the Abana and Pharpar, see 

Bible dictionaries. 
For the historical setti7ig of this passage, see 

Ottley, R. L. A Short History of the Hebrews, pp. 173, 174. 
The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50. 

For the storm-god Rimmon, see 
Bible dictionaries. 



[96] 



SELECTION XII. THE BULLS OF BASHAN AND 
THE BALM OF GILEAD 

Ps. xxii, 12 (xxi, 13, Douay) ; Deut. xxxii, 9-15; Jer. I, 17-19; 
Gen. xxxvii, 25; Gen. xliii, 11 ; Jer. viii, 18-22 

East of the Jordan and up the steep banks about two 
thousand feet lie the high plateaus of Bashan and Gilead, 
and farther south those of Moab and Edom, running off 
to the desert of Arabia. Mount Hermon is one of the 
" roots " of the Lebanons or more properly of the Anti- 
Lebanons, as the eastern range is called. In the Book of 
Joshua it is called " Lebanon toward the sunrising," * in 
the Song of Songs "the tower of Lebanon which looketh 
toward Damascus." 2 It is the prince of peaks, sending 
down its melted snows and moisture to the rich, unbroken 
plain of Bashan. Back of the plain to the east are high 
volcanic mountains. One of these mountains is mentioned 
in the Bible as "the mount of gables" or "the mount of 
summits," 3 for the tops are cone- or gable-shaped summits 
of extinct volcanoes. They rise between five and six thou- 
sand feet above the level of the sea. One of them to-day is 
called "the mount of the Druses," for a small race known 
as the Druses, an offshoot of the Syrians of the Lebanon 
region, now live there. These people, very fierce and 
quarrelsome with their neighbors, are dreaded on account 

1 Josh, xiii, 5. 

2 Song of Songs vii, 4. 

3 Ps. lxviii, 1 5, American Revised Version, marginal reading. 

[97] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

of their robber raids. 1 The caves of these mountains 
afford splendid refuge for robbers, a natural hiding place 
for plunderers. The high plain lying at the foot and 
watered by the snows of Hermon has always been famous 
for its cattle. When the Psalmist wanted a picture of him- 
self in trouble he said, 

Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 2 

When the great poet of the last chapters of Deuteronomy 
wanted to show the wonderful way in which the Lord had 
led and blessed Israel, he represented Jehovah as carrying 
him from the desert northward as an eagle carries her 
young, and putting him on the high places of the earth, 
where he could eat the fruit of the field and honey out of 
the rock, butter of the herd and milk of the flock, with 
fat of lambs and rams of the breed of Bashan. 

For Jehovah's portion is his people ; 

Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. 

He found him in a desert land, 

And in the waste howling wilderness ; 

He compassed him about, he cared for him, 

He kept him as the apple of his eye, 

As an eagle that stirreth up her nest, 

That nuttereth over her young; 

Spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, 

Beareth them on her pinions. 

Jehovah alone did lead him, 

He made him ride on the high places of the earth, 

And he did eat of the increase of the field ; 

And he made him to suck honey out of the rock, 

1 Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, and Huntington, Palestine and 
its Transformation. 
2 Ps. xxii, 12. 

[98] 



BULLS OF BASHAN AND BALM OF GILEAD 

And oil out of the flinty rock ; 

Butter of the herd, and milk of the flock, 

With the fat of lambs, 

And rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, 

With the finest of the wheat ; 

And of the blood of the grape thou drankest wine. 

But just as those fat, sleek bulls of Bashan would kick 
their masters if they had a chance, so the poet represents 
the ingratitude of Israel towards their God. 

But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked : 

Thou art waxed fat, thou art grown thick, thou art become sleek ; 

Then he forsook God who made him, 

And lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. 1 

The prophet Jeremiah also at the time of the Babylonian 
captivity can think of no more comforting hope to hold out 
to his people than that they shall return like half-starved and 
hunted sheep to feed in the rich pasture lands of Bashan. 

Israel is a hunted sheep ; the lions have driven him away : first, 
the king of Assyria devoured him ; and now at last Nebuchadrezzar 
king of Babylon hath broken his bones. Therefore thus saith Jehovah 
of hosts, the God of Israel : Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon 
and his land, as I have punished the king of Assyria. And I will 
bring Israel again to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and 
Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon the hills of Ephraim and 
in Gilead. 2 

Even to-day the size of the oxen in this part of Palestine 
reminds the traveler of the famous " kine of Bashan " of 
Biblical times. But the land that formerly was used only 

1 Deut. xxxii, 9-1 5, American Revised Version, with marginal read- 
ings. " This splendid ' Song of Moses ' is a richly colored poetical 
survey of Israel's history in the spirit of the greater prophets." — 
Gordon, Poets of the Old Testament. 

2 Jer. 1, 17-19. 

[99] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

for grazing is much of it now under the plow with rich 
returns in fields of wheat. This change is accounted for 
by the fact that the soil, being made of the deposits of lava 
from the volcanic mountains near by, had not in those 
olden times lain long enough to disintegrate and lend 
itself to cultivation. 

Just south of this plateau of Bashan lie the hills of 
Gilead. The Yarmuk River, flowing precipitously down 
the bluff to the Jordan, separates the two sections of this 
eastern range. This territory is densely wooded in places ; 
the tops of the hills are covered with pine trees. Beneath 
them is a zone of evergreen oaks, and lower down there 
is the deciduous oak mixed with wild olive and semitropical 
trees, while near the Jordan valley is found the palm. Here, 
too, are the arbutus and the myrtle, and by the streams is 
the pink oleander, a shrub of gorgeous beauty, fringing 
the banks of the upper Jordan and the Yarmuk, Jabbok, 
and Arnon rivers east of the Jordan. The location of the 
streams can readily be seen by the ribbon of burning red 
blossoms against the deep green foliage. It is perhaps the 
tree to which the righteous man is compared : 

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked, 

Nor standeth in the way of sinners, 

Nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers : 

But his delight is in the law of the Lord ; 

And on his law doth he meditate day and night. 

And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, 

That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, 

Whose leaf also doth not wither ; 

And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. 1 

1 Ps. i, 1-3, American Revised Version (with exception of the Lord 
for Jehovah). 

[IOO] 



BULLS OF BASHAN AND BALM OF GILEAD 

Sometimes in Gilead the oleander grows as high as a forest 
tree, under the shade of which the traveler may camp or rest. 
Its branches are used for the out-of-door booths in which 
the people camp while harvesting the grapes. Amidst the 
oak groves are open glades and dells, where sheep graze and 
grain is harvested and olive orchards are planted. No won- 
der some of the Israelites begged to be allowed to remain 
here in this land so attractive to the farmer and the shep- 
herd, rather than cross over and settle among the rugged 
Judean hills. To one acquainted with the country the very 
name Gilead suggests a quiet retreat, a land of balm and 
health for body and mind. These high hills shut away from 
the rest of the country were the refuge David sought when 
he fled from his son Absalom, who was trying to dethrone 
him, and in one of these oaks Absalom caught his hair 
and ignominiously met his death. It was from Gilead that 
Elijah came, and here he found his retreat when the famine 
drove him to the brook where he was fed by the ravens. 
This is the land that gave us the phrase "the balm of 
Gilead." It was from Gilead that the Ishmaelites, to whom 
Joseph was sold, came " with their camels bearing spicery 
and balm and myrrh." 1 This balm with its wonderful me- 
dicinal properties was one of the " choice fruits of the 
land " which Jacob sent down to Egypt as a present to 
his unknown son Joseph, then a great official at Pharaoh's 
court. 2 Ezekiel describes the Israelites as trading in " wheat 
and pannag [a kind of spice, probably] and honey and oil 
and balm." 3 Jeremiah twice uses the word balm as the 
figurative expression for the great restorative in the time 
of a nation's desperate sickness. 

1 Gen. xxxvii, 25. 2 Gen. xliii, 11. 8 Ezek. xxvii, 17. 

[ 101 ] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt : 
in vain dost thou use many medicines ; there is no healing for thee. 1 

Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow ! my heart is faint 
within me. Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people 
from a land that is very far off : Is not Jehovah in Zion ? is not her 
King in her ? Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven 
images, and with foreign vanities ? The harvest is past, the summer 
is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my 
people am I hurt : I mourn ; dismay hath taken hold on me. Is there 
no balm in Gilead ? is there no physician there ? why then is not the 
health of the daughter of my people recovered ? 2 

There is a false balm of Gilead sold now to the trav- 
eler ; the tree from which it is made grows on the sultry 
plains along the shores of the Dead Sea. The oil from the 
berry is prepared by the Arabs about Jericho and called 
the balm of Gilead. But it is not the genuine article 
referred to in the Bible. That tree was the balm of Gilead 
of the botanists (Balsamodendron gileadense) and is to-day 
found in the neighborhood of the city of Mecca. Its orig- 
inal home was on the east coast of Africa, but in the days 
of the Hebrews we find it as a cultivated plant in the 
plains of Jericho, where it was grown as late as the time 
of the Jewish writer Josephus, who lived until after the 
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. There is a tradition 
that the Queen of Sheba presented some of it to King 
Solomon, who had it planted there. Cleopatra sent to 
Jericho for some of the plants for her garden at Heliopolis. 
Twice this balm tree was paraded in the triumphal proces- 
sions at Rome : once in 65 b.c. when Pompey came home 
from his trip to the East and his conquest of Judea, and a 
second time after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 

1 Jer. xlvi, 11. 2 Jer. viii, 18-22. 

[I02] 



BULLS OF BASHAN AND BALM OF GILEAD 

70 a.d., when the balm tree was taken together with the 
golden candlestick and all the treasures of the Temple. 
It is not a very imposing tree, only a small evergreen 
without much foliage and with small white blossoms. Its 
value is in the balsam, which may be drained out through 
a cut in the bark or obtained from the green nuts. When 
the nuts are ripe they are reddish black with a pulpy case 
containing a fragrant yellow seed. An inferior quality of 
balsam is also obtained from the young wood by bruising 
and boiling it. This precious balsam was used internally 
as a medicine and externally for wounds. Tacitus, Strabo, 
and Pliny all speak of the balm of Gilead as very valuable 
and coming from Palestine. 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For Bashan a?id Gilead, see 

Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land, chap, xxvii, 

" Israel in Gilead and Bashan." 
Kent. Biblical Geography and History. 
Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation. 

For the Druses, see 

Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation. 
Encyclopaedias. 

For the oleander and the balm of Gilead, see 

Tristram. Natural History of the Bible. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For location of the brook Cherith, see 
Bible dictionaries. 



[ IQ 3] 



SELECTION XIII. THE CAVES 

Gen. xix, 30; Obad. 3, 4, 10-15 (Abdias 3, 4, 10-15, Douay) ; 1 Sam. 

xxiv (1 Kings xxiv, Douay) ; 1 Sam. xiii, 5-7, 19 to xiv, 23 (1 Kings xiii, 

5-7, 19 to xiv, 23, Douay) ; 1 Sam. xxii, 1,2(1 Kings xxii, 1, 2, Douay) ; 

1 Sam. xxviii, 3-25 (1 Kings xxviii, 3-25, Douay) ; Amos ix, ib~3a 

The caves of Palestine have figured extensively in the 
life and literature of its people. The limestone and soft 
chalk deposits of the hills lend themselves readily to the 
formation of natural caves varying in size from a very 
small hole to a palatial suite of rooms. Some of them 
are easy of access, near the surface of the ground ; others 
are hard to get at, under the mountains. They have been 
used for all kinds of purposes — dwellings, hiding places, 
sheep pens, graves, cisterns, and even a laundry. They 
are found all the way around from Edrei, the capital of 
Bashan and the home of the giant king Og, 1 with his 
wonderful bedstead, through Gilead, Moab, and Edom 
east of the Dead Sea, around Jerusalem and Hebron, 
where Abraham buried his wife in the cave of Machpelah, 
to the caves of the Shephelah or " Samson country," where 
David sought refuge from Saul. In very ancient times 
there were people who made the caves their homes, and 
even to-day in very primitive and uncivilized places they 
are thus used. These people are called cave dwellers, or 
troglodytes. We know that long before Abraham came to 

1 Deut. iii, 11. 
[IO4] 



THE CAVES 

Palestine there were such cave dwellers in that land. The 
country is full of wild gorges honeycombed with caves. 
Here and there one finds signs that they were used long 
ago by troglodytes and hermits. Now goats are often kept 
in them, and they afford a refuge if one is caught in the 
rain. True troglodytes are found even to-day in the hills 
of Gilead. There are cave villages in Bashan, used now 
as a refuge from Arab robbers, but once probably inhab- 
ited all the time. Thirty miles northeast of Edrei there 
is an inscription on the rock, written by King Agrippa I, 
exhorting the people to give up the practice of living like 
wild beasts in caves. Indeed, the caves on the eastern 
side of the Jordan are most famous as hiding places. A 
traveler thus describes exploring one of them : " When 
all was ready we were one by one let twirling down by a 
rope into a cistern where straw was stored. At the bottom 
the only opening was a hole two feet in diameter, through 
which we squeezed head first and found ourselves in a 
passage of about the same height. Lighting our candles 
we went forward, sometimes on hands and knees and 
sometimes on our stomachs, like worms trailing over the 
damp mud of the cavern floor. We continually expected 
to reach a larger passageway, but never did, although 
occasionally the tunnel widened into a cave where one 
could stand and walk around. Three times we came to 
chambers large enough to furnish shelter to a score of peo- 
ple ; again we traversed passages whose branches ended 
sometimes in blank walls of masonry or in shafts leading 
up to the courtyards of houses in the village or in dry 
cisterns which once furnished water to the people of the 
caves. We crawled for an hour and a half and came out 

[ 105 ] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

plastered with mud from head to foot. No one knows just 
when the caves were made, but their use is evident. They 
were places of refuge from the Arabs. Each house seems 
to have had a well communicating with the underground 
chambers. At times of alarm the people and their chief 
valuables could promptly be hidden in the caves." 1 

Upon the plateau of Moab, near Mount Pisgah, the 
scene of Moses' death, has been found a carefully exca- 
vated cave about twenty feet long and fifteen wide, hewed 
out of the limestone, with a spring below. This room has 
two windows looking down the valley toward the city of 
Zoar, the place where Lot escaped from the destruction 
of Sodom. But you remember that Lot, having seen his 
wife caught on the way by the storm of brimstone which 
turned her into a pillar of salt, was still afraid even after 
he had reached his retreat ; consequently, as the Bible 
tells us, 

Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two 
daughters with him ; for he feared to dwell in Zoar : and he dwelt 
in a cave, he and his two daughters. 2 

There has been much discussion as to just where Sodom 
was, but this locality, so subject to volcanic storms of bitu- 
minous smoke and with the cave so near to the traditional 
site of Zoar, seems to fit in well with the Bible story. In 
a mountain cave there would be safety even though it 
hailed fire and brimstone all around. The door of this 
cave has a trough cut in the rock to lead off the water in 
times of heavy rain. This door is up so high that it can 
be reached only by climbing up the sheer rock with the 

1 Huntington, Transformation of Palestine, pp. 239 f. 

2 Gen. xix, 30. 

[106] 



THE CAVES 

help of steps cut into its face six or eight inches, or by 
scrambling down from above by means of other steps 
hewed out for the purpose. 

Down in Edom has been found a very wonderful tem- 
ple cut out of the living rock. The name of the capital 
city itself is Petra, which means " rock." These Edomites 
were cousins of the Hebrews, being the descendants of 
Esau. There was never any love lost between the brothers 
Jacob and Esau. You remember when they parted after 
their final visit together at the time Jacob was returning 
home from the east with his family and flocks, he sent up 
the prayer to Jehovah, " May the Lord watch between me 
and thee while we are absent one from another," so dis- 
trustful was he of what Esau might do. And throughout 
the history of the Edomites they were distrusted and hated 
by the Israelites. They made frequent robber raids upon 
the flocks and cattle of their neighbors, even standing 
over the poor inhabitants of Jerusalem when it was burned 
by the Babylonians, looting their houses and carrying off 
the plunder. Edom was a good home for this robber race, 
for the caves made a splendid hiding place, and many a 
caravan passing up the eastern road from Egypt and the 
Red Sea lost its precious merchandise in the night by the 
way. The prophet Obadiah evidently was among the cap- 
tives of Jerusalem when they were chained and dragged 
off to exile. He saw these heartless Edomites jeering at 
them across the street and stealing all they could lay their 
hands upon. Not able to contain himself for indignation, 
he flung out against the whole tribe the bitter invective 
which is the one short chapter known as the Book of 
Obadiah. 

[ io7 ] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

The pride of thy heart hath deceived thee, O thou that dwellest 
in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high ; that saith in his 
heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground ? Though thou mount 
on high as the eagle, and though thy nest be set among the stars, I 
will bring thee down from thence, saith Jehovah. 

For the violence done to thy brother Jacob, shame shall cover 
thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever. In the day that thou stood- 
est on the other side, in the day that strangers carried away his 
substance, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon 
Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them. But look not thou on the 
day of thy brother in the day of his disaster, and rejoice not over 
the children of Judah in the day of their destruction ; neither speak 
proudly in the day of distress. Enter not into the gate of my people 
in the day of their calamity ; yea, look not thou on their affliction in 
the day of their calamity, neither lay ye hands on their substance in 
the day of their calamity. And stand thou not in the crossway, to 
cut off those of his that escape ; and deliver not up those of his that 
remain in the day of distress. 

For the day of Jehovah is near upon all the nations : as thou hast 
done, it shall be done unto thee ; thy dealing shall return upon thine 
own head. 1 

Just west of the Dead Sea, near the terrible wilderness, 
is Engedi, the scene of David's magnanimity towards 
Saul. These David-Saul stories have received the highest 
praise as great literature. They are called immortal among 
the stories of the world. 

And it came to pass, when Saul was returned from following the 
Philistines, that it was told him, saying, Behold, David is in the wil- 
derness of Engedi. Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out 
of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of 
the wild goats. And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where 
was a cave ; and Saul went in to cover his feet. Now David and his 



1 Obad. 3, 4, 10-15. 

[108] 



THE CAVES 

men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men 
of David said unto him, Behold, the day of which Jehovah said unto 
thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thy hand, and thou 
shalt do to him as it shall seem good unto thee. Then David arose, 
and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily. And it came to pass 
afterward, that David's heart smote him, because he had cut off 
Saul's skirt. And he said unto his men, Jehovah forbid that I 
should do this thing unto my lord, Jehovah's anointed, to put forth 
my hand against him, seeing he is Jehovah's anointed. So David 
checked his men with these words, and suffered them not to rise 
against Saul. And Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on 
his way. 

David also arose afterward, and went out of the cave, and cried 
after Saul, saying, My lord the king. And when Saul looked behind 
him, David bowed with his face to the earth, and did obeisance. 
And David said to Saul, Wherefore hearkenest thou to men's words, 
saying, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt ? Behold, this day thine eyes 
have seen how that Jehovah had delivered thee to-day into my hand 
in the cave: and some bade me kill thee; but mine eye spared thee ; 
and I said, I will not put forth my hand against my lord ; for he is 
Jehovah's anointed. Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of 
thy robe in my hand ; for in that I cut off the skirt of thy robe, and 
killed thee not, know thou and see that there is neither evil nor 
transgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee, 
though thou huntest after my life to take it. Jehovah judge between 
me and thee, and Jehovah avenge me of thee ; but my hand shall 
not be upon thee. As saith the proverb of the ancients, Out of the 
wicked cometh forth wickedness ; but my hand shall not be upon 
thee. After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost 
thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea. Jehovah therefore be 
judge, and give sentence between me and thee, and see, and plead 
my cause, and deliver me out of thy hand. 

And it came to pass, when David had made an end of speaking 
these words unto Saul, that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son 
David? And Saul lifted up his voice, and wept. And he said to 
David, Thou art more righteous than I ; for thou hast rendered 

[I0 9 ] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

unto me good, whereas I have rendered unto thee evil. And thou 
hast declared this day how that thou hast dealt well with me, foras- 
much as when Jehovah had delivered me up into thy hand, thou 
killedst me not. For if a man find his enemy, will he let him go 
well away? wherefore Jehovah reward thee good for that which 
thou hast done unto me this day. And now, behold, I know that 
thou shalt surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be 
established in thy hand. Swear now therefore unto me by Jehovah, 
that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not 
destroy my name out of my father's house. And David sware unto 
Saul. And Saul went home ; but David and his men gat them up 
unto the stronghold. 1 

If one is walking along a path in a valley northeast of 
Jerusalem a few hours distant from the city, at a certain 
spot he may look up thirty feet above him and spy a hole 
in a narrow overhanging ledge of rock. If he is an ath- 
lete and can climb up through this hole, he will find behind 
the natural platform a suite of four rooms, connecting with 
each other, cut into the side hill. All up and down this 
valley there are many natural caves. Some of them have 
been excavated further by the hand of man, perhaps by 
some hermit for his solitary dwelling. In the valley of 
Michmash, about twelve miles north of Jerusalem, where 
Saul and Jonathan fought the Philistines, there are found 
to-day a good many caves which seem to tally exactly with 
the Bible account. One can get at them only by a rope 
let down from the precipice above. This is the way Herod 
let down his soldiers in baskets on the banks" of the Sea 
of Galilee, when the people who were revolting against 
the government sought refuge in the caves there. The 
Old Testament tells us a famous story of the valley of 

1 i Sam. xxiv. 

[no] 



THE CAVES 

Michmash, with its holes for hiding, which the Hebrews 
took advantage of in the days of the Philistine raids. 

The Philistines assembled themselves together to fight with Israel, 
thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as 
the sand which is on the sea-shore in multitude : and they came up, 
and encamped in Michmash, eastward of Beth-aven. When the men of 
Israel saw that they were in a strait (for the people were distressed), 
then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in 
rocks, and in coverts, and in pits. Now some of the Hebrews had 
gone over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead ; but as for 
Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling. 

Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel ; 
for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or 
spears : but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen 
every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock, 
when the edges of the mattocks, and of the coulters, and of the forks, 
and of the axes were blunt, and to set the goads. So it came to pass 
in the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in 
the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan : 
but with Saul and with Jonathan his son was there found. And the 
garrison of the Philistines went out unto the pass of Michmash. 

Now it fell upon a day, that Jonathan the son of Saul said unto 
the young man that bare his armor, Come, and let us go over to the 
Philistines' garrison, that is on yonder side. But he told not his 
father. And Saul abode in the uttermost part of Gibeah under the 
pomegranate-tree which is in Migron : and the people that were with 
him were about six hundred men ; and Ahijah, the son of Ahitub, 
Ichabod's brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the priest of 
Jehovah in Shiloh, wearing an ephod. And the people knew not that 
Jonathan was gone. And between the passes, by which Jonathan 
sought to go over unto the Philistines' garrison, there was a rocky 
crag on the one side, and a rocky crag on the other side : and the 
name of the one was Bozez, and the name of the other Seneh. The 
one crag rose up on the north in front of Michmash, and the other 
on the south in front of Geba. 

[in] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armor, Come, 
and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised : it 
may be that Jehovah will work for us; for there is no restraint to 
Jehovah to save by many or by few. And his armorbearer said unto 
him, Do all that is in thy heart : turn thee, behold, I am with thee 
according to thy heart. Then said Jonathan, Behold, we will pass 
over unto the men, and we will disclose ourselves unto them. If they 
say thus unto us, Tarry until we come to you; then we will stand 
still in our place, and will not go up unto them. But if they say thus, 
Come up unto us ; then we will go up ; for Jehovah hath delivered 
them into our hand : and this shall be the sign unto us. And both 
of them disclosed themselves unto the garrison of the Philistines: 
and the Philistines said, Behold, the Hebrews come forth out of the 
holes where they had hid themselves. And the men of the garrison 
answered Jonathan and his armorbearer, and said, Come up to us, 
and we will show you a thing. And Jonathan said unto his armor- 
bearer, Come up after me ; for Jehovah hath delivered them into the 
hand of Israel. And Jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon 
his feet, and his armorbearer after him : and they fell before Jona- 
than ; and his armorbearer slew them after him. And that first 
slaughter, which Jonathan and his armorbearer made, was about 
twenty men, within as it were half a furrow's length in an acre of 
land. And there was a trembling in the camp, in the field, and among 
all the people ; the garrison, and the spoilers, they also trembled ; 
and the earth quaked: so there was an exceeding great trembling. 

And the watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked ; and, 
behold, the multitude melted away, and they went hither and thither. 
Then said Saul unto the people that were with him, Number now, 
and see who is gone from us. And when they had numbered, behold, 
Jonathan and his armorbearer were not there. And Saul said unto 
Ahijah, Bring hither the ark of God. For the ark of God was there 
at that time with the children of Israel. And it came to pass, while 
Saul talked unto the priest, that the tumult that was in the camp of 
the Philistines went on and increased : and Saul said unto the priest, 
Withdraw thy hand. And Saul and all the people that were with 
him were gathered together, and came to the battle : and behold, 

[112] 



THE CAVES 

every man's sword was against his fellow, and there was a very 
great discomfiture. Now the Hebrews that were with the Philistines 
as beforetime, and that went up with them into the camp, from the 
country round about, even they also turned to be with the Israelites 
that were with Saul and Jonathan. Likewise all the men of Israel 
that had hid themselves in the hill-country of Ephraim, when they 
heard that the Philistines fled, even they also followed hard after 
them in the battle. So Jehovah saved Israel that day : and the battle 
passed over by Beth-aven. 1 

Far to the north of Michmash, near Mount Tabor and 
the Sea of Galilee, is a cave noted as the resort of the 
Witch of Endor, whom Saul consulted one day in his 
desperation after the death of his good counselor Samuel. 
These dark caverns of the earth would seem the very place 
for the haunt of a witch. There she might brew her potions 
and bring back the voice of the dead to tell the fortune of 
a despairing king. 2 

Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and 
buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away 
those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land. And 
the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and encamped 
in Shunem; and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they en- 
camped in Gilboa. And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, 
he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul in- 
quired of Jehovah, Jehovah answered him not, neither by dreams, 
nor by Urim, nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants, 
Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, 
and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a 
woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. 

And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and went, 
he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night : 

1 1 Sam. xiii, 5-7, 19 to xiv, 23, American Revised Version, with 
marginal readings. 
2 1 Sam. xxviii, 3-25. 

["3] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

and he said, Divine unto me, I pray thee, by the familiar spirit, and 
bring me up whomsoever I shall name unto thee. And the woman 
said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he 
hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of 
the land : wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me 
to die? And Saul sware to her by Jehovah, saying, As Jehovah 
liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing. Then 
said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, 
Bring me up Samuel. And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried 
with a loud voice ; and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast 
thou deceived me ? for thou art Saul. And the king said unto her, 
Be not afraid : for what seest thou ? And the woman said unto Saul, 
I see a god coming up out of the earth. And he said unto her, What 
form is he of ? And she said, An old man cometh up ; and he is 
covered with a robe. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he 
bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance. 

And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring 
me up ? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed ; for the Philistines 
make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth 
me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams : therefore I have 
called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. 
And Samuel said, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing Jehovah 
is departed from thee, and is become thine adversary ? And Jehovah 
hath done unto thee, as he spake by me : and Jehovah hath rent the 
kingdom out of thy hand, and given it to thy neighbor, even to David. 
Because thou obeyedst not the voice of Jehovah, and didst not exe- 
cute his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath Jehovah done this 
thing unto thee this day. Moreover Jehovah will deliver Israel also 
with thee into the hand of the Philistines ; and to-morrow shalt thou 
and thy sons be with me : Jehovah will deliver the host of Israel also 
into the hand of the Philistines. 

Then Saul fell straightway his full length upon the earth, and was 
sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel : and there was no strength 
in him ; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night. And 
the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was sore troubled, and said 
unto him, Behold, thy handmaid hath hearkened unto thy voice, and 

[114] 



THE CAVES 

I have put my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto thy words 
which thou spakest unto me. Now therefore, I pray thee, hearken 
thou also unto the voice of thy handmaid, and let me set a morsel of 
bread before thee ; and eat, that thou mayest have strength, when 
thou goest on thy way. But he refused, and said, I will not eat. But 
his servants, together with the woman, constrained him; and he 
hearkened unto their voice. So he arose from the earth, and sat upon 
the bed. And the woman had a fatted calf in the house; and she 
hasted, and killed it ; and she took flour, and kneaded it, and did 
bake unleavened bread thereof : and she brought it before Saul, and 
before his servants ; and they did eat. Then they rose up, and went 
away that night. 

Some of these caves in Palestine are low and narrow, 
with tortuous passages, in many cases requiring one to crawl 
on hands and knees, while others contain high, vaulted, 
cathedral-like chambers. In some places stairs have been 
cut down into the hollows below the ground, and these 
hollows have been enlarged and cemented. Sometimes 
they are used as cisterns for catching water. In one cave 
a rock-cut channel connects it with a spring, and here are 
found conveniences for an ancient laundry. The walls of 
this cave are adorned with beautiful maidenhair ferns. 

Over in the region of the Shephelah, or hill country, be- 
tween Jerusalem and the Philistine Plain there are many 
caves. Professor Huntington thus describes one which 
he explored : " Because the hills are composed of easily 
worked chalk, they have been carved into a thousand 
caves. On one of these, or rather in a series of recesses 
opening into a large central cavern, we made our camp. 
In the starlight that evening we walked from cave to cave 
through dewy grass and grain, and lighting our candles 
entered the rock-hewn refuges of the early saints and the 

[H5] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

tombs of still earlier Phoenicians. In one place a dark 
hole in the hillside was lined with maidenhair fern so 
thick as to hide the walls and the slippery chalk steps 
down which we almost slid. At a depth of about fifteen 
feet below the surface three doors opened before us in the 
gloom, one to the left, one to the right, and one in front. 
The left-hand door opened high on the side of a circular 
chamber twenty feet or more in diameter and of almost 
equal height. A flight of stone steps led spirally down- 
ward, but we did not descend far, for at the bottom the 
candlelight was reflected in dark water. The right-hand 
door likewise opened upon a flight of rock-hewn steps. 
They descended into a circular domed room of great height 
having a diameter of nearly forty feet. High on the right 
some small chambers with niches designed for the recep- 
tion of bodies opened from the main room, while on the 
left a great doorway led into the still larger room to which 
the third door at the foot of the outside stairs also gave 
access. In the middle of this last room a square well some 
three feet across proves that the caves were long inhabited. 
The edges of the rock at the mouth of the well have been 
beautifully fluted where the rope has rubbed against the 
chalk as countless leather buckets were drawn up full of 
cold water. The fluting is much like that on some of the 
columns in Indian temples where small grooves are cut in 
the sides of larger ones in pleasing variety." 

The cave of Adullam (the place of refuge David first 
sought when Saul turned against him) was among these 
chalk hills. Here his band of discontents was formed. 

David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave of Adul- 
lam : and when his brethren and all his father's house heard it, they 

[116] 



THE CAVES 

went down thither to him. And every one that was in distress, and 
every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, 
gathered themselves unto him ; and he became captain over them : 
and there were with him about four hundred men. 1 

Another famous scene in David's life connected with 
this cave 2 is celebrated by Charles Lamb in his poem 
" The Cave of Adullam." 

David and his three captains bold 
Kept ambush once within a hold. 
It was in Adullam's cave, 
Nigh which no water they could have. 

These same caves later harbored Judas Maccabeus and 
his faithful followers in their desperate struggle against 
the Greeks in 166 b.c. About a century before this the 
Phoenicians had decorated some of them. They were 
evidently used as burial places for the dead. They generally 
consist of three rooms about seven or eight feet high, one 
in front and one on either side. The walls of these rooms 
are lined with niches about three feet by a foot and a half, 
which are the doors of the graves. They set back into the 
hillside six or seven feet. In the main room of one of 
these caves may still be seen over the niches a much dis- 
figured series of paintings representing men and animals 
in hunting scenes. The relationship to Egypt is shown 
by the pictures of African animals, such as the giraffe, 
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and crocodile. This particular 
cave was made into its present form about two hundred 
and fifty years before Christ. It was the burial place of 
the Phoenician chief whose tomb is a large niche at the 
end of the main room. 

1 i Sam. xxii, i, 2. 2 2 Sam. xxiii, 13-17. 

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OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

There are caves in the rocks of Mount Carmel also. 
Amos, the great prophet of Justice, used the figure of the 
caves of Carmel when he warned the people of his day that 
unless they rooted out the social wrongs rampant under a 
false cloak of religion, the Lord would root them out. 

There shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of 
them escape. Though they dig into Sheol, thence shall my hand take 
them ; and though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them 
down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will 
search and take them out thence. 1 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For the caves, see 

Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation. 
Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For the David-Saul stories, see 

Fowler. History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 
Gardiner, J. H. The Bible as English Literature. Charles Scrib- 

ner's Sons. $1.50. 
Baldwin. How to Write. 

1 Amos ix, ib~3a. 



Il8 




Underwood & Underwood 

THE WILDERNESS SOUTH OF THE DEAD SEA 



SELECTION XIV. THE DESERT 

Ps. ciii, 15, 1 6 (cii, 15, 16, Douay) ; Ps. lxiii, 1 (Ixii, 2, 3, Douay) ; Ps. xlii, 

1, 2 (xli, 2, 3, Douay); Ps. cvii, 4ft. (cvi, 4 ff ., Douay); Ps. cxliii, 6-8 (cxlii, 

6-8, Douay) ; Isa. xxxii, 1, 2; Isa. lv; Isa. xl 

Palestine is a land of contrasts, and the force of Hebrew 
literature is largely in its contrasts. In the Congressional 
Library at Washington are to be seen two pictures, one at 
either end of the same corridor. The one is painted in 
bright red, the other in brilliant blue. Why were they so 
placed ? To bring out the force of each more vividly by 
the striking contrast. Thus we find it in Hebrew literature, 
the dark against the light ; doom and blessing ; joy and 
sorrow ; despair and hope ; fear and faith, and the con- 
trast pictured with the swiftest strokes of the pen. Only 
here it was evidently not premeditated art, but the nai've, 
unconscious expression of native genius. We must re- 
member, however, that the seeds of genius are sown in 
the land, are nourished by the soil, are watered by the 
skies of a country. The spirit of racial genius is felt in 
the very atmosphere. The breath of its life is drawn into 
the soul as the men of a race breathe the air of their native 
heath. So it was in Hebrew literature. Amos, the stern 
prophet of Justice, could give such dark, blasting forebod- 
ings of ruin because he himself lived neighbor to the 
wilderness, " next door to doom "; Hosea, the prophet of 
forgiving Love, could picture the joy and refreshed, invig- 
orated life of the forgiven soul because he himself had 

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OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

known the recreating power of the dews of Hermon and 
the smell of Lebanon ; the Psalmist could appreciate the 
Peace of God because he had been in the terror of the 
storm ; Joel could see the punishment of his people like a 
scourge of locusts ; Isaiah imagined that Paradise would 
be somewhat like Mount Carmel in all its beauty ; Ezekiel 
pictured the New Jerusalem as a city with a perpetual 
fountain of living water flowing down in a great stream to 
the sea, where fish could thrive and trees could flourish, 
because he was so familiar with the scarcity of water on 
the Judean hills and the barrenness of the shores of the 
Dead Sea. 

Thus the wilderness and the desert afford many figures 
for the poet. " The wilderness shall blossom as the rose " 1 
because the utterly forlorn and unattractive landscape bor- 
dering on the Salt Sea bursts out in bloom under the influ- 
ence of the spring rains and for a short time is sprinkled 
with beautiful flowers ; man's days are compared to the 
life of the grass and the flowers of the field because the 
hot east wind blowing from the desert passes over it and 
withers it up in a day. 

As for man, his days are as grass ; 
As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone ; 
And the place thereof shall know it no more. 2 

The intense thirst of the traveler on the desert road is like 
the thirst of the soul for God. 

God, thou art my God ; earnestly will I seek thee : 
My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, 
In a dry and weary land, where no water is. 8 

1 Isa. xxxv, i. 2 Ps. ciii, 15, 1 6. 3 Ps. lxiii, 1. 

[I20] 






THE DESERT 

As the heart panteth after the water brooks, 
So panteth my soul after thee, O God. 
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God : 
When shall I come and appear before God ? x 

Straying in the wilderness, in the desert, 
The way to an inhabited city they found not. 
Hungry, yea thirsty, 
Their soul fainted within them. 

Then they cried unto Jehovah in their strait, 
That out of their distresses he might deliver them ; 
Then he made them tread in a straight way, 
To go unto an inhabited city. 2 

And the picture which Isaiah drew of the Ideal Man to 
come, who was to embody the Spirit of Justice, was of one 
who should give rest and confidence to the people as the 
shade of a great rock in a weary land. 

Behold, righteously the King shall reign, 

And the princes justly shall they rule ; 

And a great man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, 

Like a covert from the rainstorm, 

Like rivulets in a parched land, 

Like the shadow of a huge cliff in a thirsty land. 3 

The memory of the weary, thirsty days which the captives 
spent toiling over the road to Babylon, and later back again 
to Jerusalem, was stamped so indelibly upon their minds 
that the poets of the exile most naturally represented 
repentant Israel as spreading out her hands to God for 
relief from intolerable thirst of soul. 

1 Ps. xlii, i, 2. 

2 Ps. cvii, 4ff., Briggs's translation. 

3 Isa. xxxii, i, 2, see Cheyne's and Kent's translations. 

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OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

I spread forth my hands unto thee : 

My soul thirsteth after thee, as a weary land. 

Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah ; my spirit faileth : 

Hide not thy face from me, 

Lest I become like them that go down into the pit. 

Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning ; 

For in thee do I trust : 

Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk ; 

For I lift up my soul unto thee. 1 

But nowhere has the hope of salvation from distress 
been more vividly and beautifully expressed than by the 
great Prophet of the Exile in the fifty-fifth chapter of 
Isaiah, where he pictures the satisfying of thirsty Israel, 
not by the wine and milk of Babylon, which could be easily 
bought with money, but by the satisfying of his thirsty, 
homesick soul, that needed to be revived. The first stanza 
imitates the call of the water-sellers and the last two show 
the miraculous transformation of the desert into a land 
luxuriant with Israel's favorite trees, the fir and the myrtle. 

Ho, everyone who thirsteth, come ye to the waters, 
And he that hath no money, come ! 
Buy and eat, without money, 
Wine and milk without price. 

Why spend money for what is not bread 

And your earnings for that which cannot satisfy? 

Hearken ! Hearken unto me ! 

And eat ye that which is good, 

And let your soul delight itself in fatness. 

Incline your ear and come unto me ; 

Hear, and your soul shall revive ; 

And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, 

The sure promises of kindness toward David. 

1 Ps. cxliii, 6-8. 

[122] 



THE DESERT 

Just as I made him as a witness to the peoples, 

A prince and a commander to the nations, 

So thou wilt call a nation which thou knowest not, 

And they who know thee not shall run to thee, 

Because of Jehovah thy God, 

And Israel's Holy One, for he hath honored thee. 

Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found ; 
Call ye upon him while he is near ; 
He will have compassion, 
And will abundantly pardon. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, 

And your ways are not my ways, is Jehovah's oracle, 

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, 

So are my ways higher than your ways, 

And my thoughts than your thoughts. 

For as the rain cometh down from heaven, 

And returneth not thither, 

Except it hath watered the earth 

And made it bring forth and sprout, 

And given seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 

So shall my word be that goeth forth from my mouth ; 

It shall not return unto me empty, 

Except it hath accomplished what I please, 

And it hath prospered in the thing for which I sent it. 

For with joy shall ye go out, 

And in peace shall ye be led forth ; 

The mountains and the hills shall burst out before you into 

singing, 
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 

Instead of the thorn-bush shall come up the fir tree, 
Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree ; 

t I2 3] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

And it shall be a memorial to Jehovah, 

An everlasting sign which shall not be cut off. 1 

The long journey of seven hundred miles to Babylon 
on foot and in fetters has been likened to the transportation 
of Russian exiles to Siberia. But the prophet's picture of 
the road back home to Jerusalem after the years of captiv- 
ity is of the desert way transformed and prepared by the 
tender care of the Great Shepherd who is bringing home 
his lost sheep. The usual way to Babylon was around the 
desert, not through it, but the prophet is impatient of 
roundabout roads and so sketches in a sublime song of 
faith and cheer the shortest way, made ready by a wonder- 
ful transformation. This whole fortieth chapter of Isaiah 
is a marvelous lyric poem with the qualities and power of 
the drama ; " like the prelude of an opera, it almost sings 
itself, voice answering voice." 

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and declare to her 

That her hard service is accomplished, her guilt is paid off, 

That she hath received from Jehovah's hand double for all her sins. 

Hark ! one that calleth ! 

In the wilderness clear ye Jehovah's way. 

Make level in the desert a highway for our God ! 

Let every mountain and hill be made low, 

And every valley be lifted up, 

And the crooked be made straight, 

And the rough ridges a plain, 

And the glory of Jehovah will be revealed. 

And all flesh shall see it together, 

For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. 

1 See Cheyne's, Kent's, and McFadyen's translations and arrange- 
ments. 

[I2 4 ] 



THE DESERT 

Hark! one that calleth! 

And one said, " What shall I call? " 

All flesh is grass, 

And all the grace thereof like flowers of the field. 

Dry is the grass, faded are the flowers, 

If the breath of Jehovah hath blown thereon. 

Dry is the grass, faded are the flowers, 

But the word of our God shall stand forever. 

To a high mountain get thee up, 

Zion's herald of good news ; 

Lift up mightily thy voice, 

Jerusalem's herald of good news, 

Lift up fearlessly. 

Say to the cities of Judah, " Behold your God ! " 

Behold, Jehovah cometh in might, 

And his Arm is maintaining his rule ; 

Behold, his reward is with him, 

And his recompense is before him. 

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd, 

He shall gather the lambs in his arm, 

And carry them in his bosom, 

And shall gently lead those that have their young. 

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, 

And ruled off the heavens with a span, 

Or enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, 

And weighed the mountains in scales, 

And the hills in a balance ? 

Who hath directed the spirit of Jehovah, 

And as his counselor advised him ? 

With whom hath he consulted for enlightenment, 

To be instructed in the right, 

To be shown the way of understanding ? 

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OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Lo the nations ! as a drop from a bucket, 

And as dust on a balance are they reckoned ; 

Lo the isles ! as a straw he uplifteth, 

And Lebanon is not enough for fuel, 

And its wild beasts for a burnt offering. 

All the nations are as nothing before him, 

They are reckoned by him as chaos and nothingness. 

To whom then will ye liken God, 
And what likeness place beside him ? 
An image ! a craftsman cast it, 
And a smelter overlays it with gold, 
And forgeth for it chains of silver. 
He who is too poor to do this 
Chooses a tree that is not decayed, 
Seeks for himself a skilled craftsman, 
To set up an image that shall not totter. 

Do ye not know ? Do ye not hear ? 

Hath it not been told you from the beginning? 

Have ye not understood from the founding of the earth ? 

It is he who is enthroned above the vault of the earth, 

And its inhabitants are as locusts ; 

Who stretcheth out the heavens as a thin veil, 

And spreadeth them out like a habitable tent. 

It is he who bringeth men of weight to nothing, 

The rulers of the earth he maketh as waste. 

Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, 

Scarcely hath the stock taken root in the earth, 

But he bloweth upon them and they wither, 

And a whirlwind carries them away like stubble. 

To whom then will ye liken me, 

That I should equal him ? saith the Holy One. 

Lift up your eyes on high and see ; 

Who hath created these ? 1 

1 The stars. 

[126] 



THE DESERT 

He who bringeth forth their host by number, 
And calleth each by his name ; 
Through abounding might and firmness of strength, 
Not one is missing. 

Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel ; 

My way is hid from Jehovah 

And my right is unnoticed by my God ? 

Hast thou not known ? Hast thou not heard ? 

An everlasting God is Jehovah. 

The creator of the ends of the earth, 

He fainteth not, neither is weary, 

His wisdom is unfathomable. 

He giveth vigor to the fainting, 

And upon the powerless he lavisheth strength. 

Young men may faint and grow weary, 

And the strongest youths may stumble, 

But they who trust in Jehovah renew their vigor, 

They shall mount on wings like eagles, 

They shall run and not be weary, 

They shall walk and not faint. 1 



SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For the desert, see 

Goodrich-Freer. Things seen in Palestine, chap, iii, "The 

Desert Life." 
Baldensperger. P. J. The Immovable East, chap, ii, " In the 

Bedouin Country." 
Kent. Biblical Geography and History. 
Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine. 
Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation, chap, v, " The 

Wilderness of Judea." 

1 See Kent's, Cheyne's, and McFadyen's translations and arrange- 
ments. 



[127] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Smith, G. A. Isaiah, Vol. II, chap, iv, " Israel in Exile." 2 vols. 

George H. Doran Company, New York. 50 cents a volume. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For the passages in Isaiah and the Psalnis, see 

International Critical Commentary, " Isaiah " and " Psalms." 
Students' Old Testament : ct Sermons, Epistles and Apocalypses of 

Israel's Prophets." 
McFadyen, J. E. The Bible for Home and School: "The Book 

of the Prophecies of Isaiah." The Macmillan Company, New 

York. 90 cents. 
Smith. Isaiah. 
Fowler. History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 



[128] 



SELECTION XV. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

Ps. civ (Ps. ciii, Douay) ; Deut. viii, 7-10; Exod. xxxiv, 22, 26; Judges 
vi, 11, 12 ; and selections from the Prophets and from Job. 

We started this series of studies with the Coast Road, 
and we have now reached the road called the Desert Way. 
Between the coast on the west and the desert on the east 
are hills and vales sheltering the homes of the people. 
Sometimes these homes were in the larger cities, like 
Jerusalem and Samaria, but for the most part they were 
in little villages like Bethlehem, the birthplace of David, 
six miles south of Jerusalem, or Anathoth, the home of 
Jeremiah, six miles to the north. The great men of the 
Hebrew race sometimes came from the city, — Isaiah, 
her greatest statesman, was a city man, so was Zephaniah, 
— but more often they came from the country. Micah was 
the prophet of the poor country peasant, with his home in 
Moresheth looking down from his highland farm over the 
coast road. Amos came from Tekoa, near the wilderness, 
and was proud to be called a shepherd and a dresser of 
sycamore trees. Elijah's home was in the remote districts 
of Gilead, and he found his successor, Elisha, in Northern 
Israel, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. Deborah was a 
country woman, who sat under her palm tree in Ephraim 
to judge Israel, and King Lemuel's model wife was one 

Who considereth a field and buyeth it ; 

With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. 1 

1 Prov. xxxi, 16. 

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OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

The Hebrew race was essentially a rural race. Their 
genius was of the rugged, virile sort produced on the farm, 
tilling the soil, planting the vine, following the sheep. 
Their knowledge of God came largely through nature, 
and they read nature as an open book because they lived 
out of doors. The Hebrew poets were as unerring in their 
appreciation of nature as the Greek artists in their instinct 
for form and proportion. 1 Who but one most familiar with 
the country could have written such a nature poem as the 
one hundred fourth Psalm ? There the Psalmist calls the 
light God's garment and the heavens his curtain, the winds 
his messengers and the flames his ministers, and praises 
him as the great Creator of the sea and the mountain, 
the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, 

Who causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, 
And herb for the service of man ; 
That he may bring forth food out of the earth, 
And wine that maketh glad the heart of man. 

And with this as a background he sings of man, 

Who goeth forth unto his work 
And to his labor until the evening. 

The characteristic labor of this rural nation, the work 
that caused them to bless the Lord with such spontaneous, 
heartfelt fervor, was the labor of the agriculturist, tending 
the sheep, dressing the vine, raising the grain. In Hebrew 
literature we have many songs which sprang out of the 
hearts of these nature-lovers as they worked. Perhaps it 
was the freedom of this out-of-door life that made them 

1 Fowler, History of the Literature of Ancient Israel, p. 268. 
[ISO] 



THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

poets. At any rate, it was their rural independence that 
made them hard to conquer. 

Farming has been one of the chief occupations of the 
people of Palestine from the earliest days when the great 
King of Egypt, Thutmose III, sent his men up every year 
to the valley of Esdraelon to cut the grain for his army. 
Two or three hundred years after Thutmose III, at the 
time when the Children of Israel escaped from their slavery 
in Egypt, they turned their faces to the Land of Promise 
because they expected in that land to own fields of wheat 
and barley and hillsides covered with vines and fig trees 
and to have enough to eat from their own little plots of 
ground. To a people who had been working in a brick 
factory, serving heartless taskmasters for a pittance which 
was scarcely enough to support life, this Promised Land 
always seemed like a paradise. 

For Jehovah thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of 
brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys 
and hills ; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and 
pomegranates ; a land of olive-trees and honey ; a land wherein thou 
shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it ; 
a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig 
copper. And thou shalt eat and be full, and thou shalt bless Jehovah 
thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. 1 

In gratitude for such a land of country homes, where they 
should be neither slaves nor renters, but where each man 
could sit under his vine and fig tree, 2 the Israelites estab- 
lished in the early days an annual feast much like our 
Thanksgiving Day or the Harvest Home festival of Canada. 

1 Deut. viii, 7-10. 2 Mic. iv, 4. 

[131] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even of the first-fruits 
of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. The 
first of the first-fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the house 
of Jehovah thy God. 1 

Of course the Israelites had their troubles in getting 
hold of this good wheat land. We have seen what exas- 
perating days the Danites spent hovering over the fields 
of the Philistines, and how Samson stole his revenge by 
setting fire to the standing grain. 2 Gideon, too, on the 
eastern side of the country, was obliged to hide the wheat 
he had threshed for fear the Midianites across the border 
would come in the night and steal it from him. 

Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress, to hide it from 
the Midianites. And the angel of Jehovah appeared unto him, and 
said unto him, Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. 3 

In later days, when the Israelites had become stronger 
and had impressed their importance upon the people round 
about, we still find that the wheat fields figure largely in 
the picture of their life. When the Philistines became 
superstitiously fearful of the Jehovah religion and sent 
back home the sacred ark which they had captured as a 
prize of war, it was from the wheat fields of Beth-Shemesh 
that the reapers looked up and saw it approaching in the 
distance. 4 When Solomon was bartering with King Hiram 
of Tyre for the lumber and artificers to build his magnifi- 
cent Temple at Jerusalem, it was with twenty thousand 
measures of wheat that he paid a part of the bill. 5 

1 Exod. xxxiv, 22, 26. This was called the Feast of Tabernacles or 
Booths, because during the feast the people camped out under the 
shelter of booths made of branches of trees. 

2 Judges xv. 3 Judges vi, 11, 12. 4 1 Sam. vi, 13. 

5 1 Kings v, 11. A measure is supposed to equal about one and a 
half pecks. 

[132] 



THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

About two hundred years after Solomon's reign we find 
the fields again figuring very largely, but this time under 
quite different conditions. Certain men had become rich 
by getting hold of their neighbors' land and had created 
great estates for themselves by putting small homesteads 
together. Then they had moved into the city to live a life 
of luxury upon the rentals they exacted from the peasant 
farmers. These rich landlords were not very particular 
how they obtained their possessions, whether by fair means 
or by foul. The prophet Micah says that they coveted 
fields and then seized them, lying awake nights to devise 
means of accomplishing their designs. 1 Isaiah breaks out 
with an invective against the greedy real-estate sharks who 
allowed the owners of small farms no alternative but to 
meet hard terms or die. 

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till 
there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of 
the land ! 2 

This was much like the condition of things in our own 
country not many years ago, when in certain sections of 
the West the big ranchmen had everything so much their 
own way that a small owner had no chance for a livelihood. 
For miles and miles there were no dwellings save the ranch 
house of the one great cattle king. It was quite easy to 
remove fences in such a lonely stretch of land and there 
was much complaint that these big ranchmen included 
free government land within their own boundaries. Over 
in Palestine real fences are unknown. A man's land is 
sometimes enclosed by a loose stone wall, but a furrow 

1 Mic. ii, 1,2. 2 Isa. v, 8. 

[133] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

made by a plow with stones placed at intervals is the an- 
cient custom of marking the limits of a farm. Some of 
the owners of real estate were so grasping that, when the 
laws in Deuteronomy were made, one seems to have been 
framed especially for them : 

Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark. 1 

At the time of the prophets we find avarice so rampant 
that speculations in the wheat market had become very 
fascinating to the greedy merchants. They could scarcely 
wait for the Sabbath day to be over or the monthly reli- 
gious feast to be completed, before they should open up 
trade again and " set forth the wheat." And they knew 
how to get the best of the purchaser, too, by using a small 
bushel or false balances and by charging a large price. 
They even sold refuse wheat to the poor as if it were good 
wheat. The prophet Amos draws this picture very vividly ! 

Hear this, O ye that would swallow up the needy, and cause the 
poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, 
that we may sell grain ? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, 
making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely 
with balances of deceit ; that we may buy the poor for silver, and the 
needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat ? 2 

When Job, the Man of Affliction, was enduring his deep 
distress, and his four philosopher friends were trying to 
think up some good reason for. all his trouble, one of them 
declared that he had found the reason in the fact that 
Job in his prosperous days had not cared how he obtained 
his riches and had cheated the small homesteader and 
swallowed up his substance ; they said that all of Job's 
afflictions were a just punishment for this. 

1 Deut. xxvii, 17. 2 Amos viii, 4-6. 

[134] 



THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again ; 

He shall not look upon the rivers, 

The flowing streams of honey and butter. 

That which he labored for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it 

down; 
According to the substance that he hath gotten, he shall not rejoice. 
For he hath oppressed and forsaken the poor ; 
He hath violently taken away a house which he builded not. 
Because he knew no quietness in his greed 
He shall not save aught of that wherein he delighteth. 
There was nothing left that he devoured not ; 
Therefore his prosperity shall not endure. 
In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits : 
The hand of every one that is in misery shall come upon him. 
When he is about to fill his belly, God will cast the fierceness of his 

wrath upon him, 
And will rain it upon him while he is eating. 
The increase of his house shall depart : 
His goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath. 
This is the portion of a wicked man from God, 
And the heritage appointed unto him by God. 1 

But Job knew these were false charges. After listening 
to all that his friends had to say he finally arose and vindi- 
cated himself. With a clear conscience and with righteous 
indignation at such unkind aspersions, he poured out his 
eloquent " Oath of Clearing." 

If I have walked with falsehood, 

And my foot hath hasted to deceit : 

Then let me sow, and let another eat ; 

Yea, let the produce of my field be rooted out. 

If I have withheld the poor from their desire, 

Or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail, 

Or have eaten my morsel alone, 

1 Job xx, 1 5 ff., American Revised Version, with marginal readings. 

[135] 










OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

And the fatherless hath not eaten thereof ; 

If I have seen any perish for want of clothing, 

Or that the needy had no covering ; 

If his loins have not blessed me,| 

And if he hath not been warmed with the fleece of my sheep : 

Then let my shoulder fall from the shoulder-blade, 

And mine arm be broken from the bone. 

If I have made gold my hope, 

And have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence ; 

If I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, 

And because my hand had gotten much ; 

If my land crieth out against me, 

And the furrows thereof weep together ; 

If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, 

Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life : 

Let thistles grow instead of wheat, 

And cockle instead of barley. 1 

If there was one man like Job, however, there were 
doubtless many like those depicted by Zophar, Job's pre- 
tended friend. Cheating in lands and markets was such 
a common practice that no one believed a truly honest man 
existed. Ezekiel tells us that even the women were guilty 
of selling their souls for handfuls of barley, or what was 
the same thing, of making it easy for their husbands to 
be dishonest. 

Woe to the women that sew pillows upon all elbows, and make 
kerchiefs for the head of persons of every stature to hunt souls ! And 
ye have profaned me among my people for handfuls of barley and 
for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die. 2 

Lack of prosperity, it is true, was sometimes due to the 
utter shiftlessness of the peasant people. Especially was 
this the case after their return from the captivity in Babylon, 

1 Job xxxi, 5 ff. 2 Ezek. xiii, 18 f. 

[136] 



THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

when they were trying under most discouraging conditions 
to get the land back into their hands and make it amount 
to something. It was uphill work and too disheartening 
for many a farmer. The prophet Haggai scolds the people 
roundly for sinking back into shiftless indifference. 

Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little ; ye 
eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not rilled with 
drink ; ye clothe you, but there is none warm ; and he that earneth 
wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. 1 

In spite of all this, however, the common people still kept 
on tilling the soil. Notwithstanding the injustice of man 
and the cruel failures of crops, they instinctively turned to 
the great Creator as the giver of rain and sunshine and 
the blessed harvest. 

Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in Jehovah your 
God; for he giveth you the former rain in just measure, and he 
causeth to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter 
rain, in the first month. And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the 
vats shall overflow with new wine and oil. And I will restore to you 
the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker-worm, and the cater- 
pillar, and the palmer-worm, my great army which I sent among you. 
And ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and shall praise the name 
of Jehovah your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you. 2 

The background for many of the soul-stirring messages 
of the prophets was without question an agricultural com- 
munity earning a living from the soil. The very vices of 
the city were dependent upon the wealth wrung from the 
land. If the crops failed for whatever cause — a scourge of 
grasshoppers, or lack of rain, or the heartless oppression of 
the landlord — it brought disaster upon the whole country. 

i Hag. i, 5, 6. 2 Joel ii, 23 ff. 

[137] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Indeed, one of the finest expressions of faith in God which 
the Old Testament contains is the poem found in the Book 
of Habakkuk, where the prophet, after struggling through 
deep skepticism because of the injustice and undeserved 
hardships which he sees his people bearing, gets such a 
vision of God's eternal care for his children that he sings 
triumphantly : 

For though the fig-tree shall not nourish, 
Neither shall fruit be in the vines ; 
The labor of the olive shall fail, 
And the fields shall yield no food ; 
The flock shall be cut off from the fold, 
And there shall be no herd in the stalls : 
Yet I will rejoice in Jehovah, 
I will joy in the God of my salvation. 1 

It seems very strange to us living in America in the 
twentieth century that a country so evidently dependent 
upon agriculture for all its prosperity should have pro- 
gressed in the science of farming so little as Palestine has 
done. There is scarcely another place on the globe where 
one may find farming customs dating back practically un- 
changed for at least twenty-five hundred years. The fel- 
lahin, or peasants, of to-day employ the methods used at 
the time of the prophets. Wheat and barley are still the 
common grains. In Old Testament times the poor lived 
almost exclusively upon bread made of barley mixed with 
a little wheat. There is also a kind of millet, but no oats 
or hay. Winter wheat is sown, as with us, after the heavy 
rains of the fall, " when the thirst of the land is quenched." 
Barley is sown a little later. The farmer loads a donkey 

1 Some think iii written later than i and ii, but the lesson is the same. 

[138] 



THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

with the seed-bags and plow and starts with his men for 
the field. When they have arrived, the donkey is unloaded 
and turned loose to browse. The men get ready for their 
task by throwing off their outer garment and tucking their 
skirts into their belts. Then one man goes ahead sowing 
the grain and another follows with the plow fastened to a 
donkey, horse, or camel brought to the field especially to 
drag the plow. If the farmer is well-to-do, a yoke of oxen is 
used. The plow is of wood shod with iron, and only scratches 
up the surface of the ground, turning the seed under. If the 
hillside is too steep for the plow to reach all its nooks, a man 
follows with a pickaxe to stir up the soil not reached by the 
plow. After such preparation the seed is supposed to find 
lodgement and grow, without the use of fertilizer. 

After the spring rains and mists, harvest time begins. 
Everybody now camps out in the fields, women and children 
as well as men. It is a time of happy work and singing. 
Some one has to sleep in the fields, for the harvest is cov- 
eted by the Arabs just as Gideon's grain was coveted by 
the Midianites. The reaper uses a sickle, ties up each 
bunch of grain with straw and makes a shock, much as was 
done in the days of our grandfathers, before harvesting 
machines were invented. If the reaper is a man, he uses 
a sheepskin apron and a large glove, but if a woman, as 
often happens, neither is provided. As in Ruth's day, 
poor women and girls are permitted to follow the reapers 
and glean what falls to the ground. 

Finally the shocks are loaded on the backs of donkeys, 
mules, or camels, and carried to the threshing floor. This 
is a smooth piece of ground, beaten hard, and sometimes 
having a rock foundation. Each family has a separate pile 

[!39] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

of grain on this floor. Before the threshing can begin, the 
tax collector appears and chooses out his bundle from each 
pile. This has to be threshed first and the grain delivered to 
him, before matters can proceed. The right to collect these 
taxes, or tithes, is given to the highest bidder. To thresh 
the piles of grain, animals shod with sheet-iron shoes are 
driven around and around upon them, their hoofs beating 
out the kernels. Sometimes a sledge with heavy iron teeth 
is driven over the wheat. When this process has been car- 
ried on long enough, the resulting mixture of chaff and 
grain must be winnowed. This is done by tossing it into 
the air with a wooden fork, or " fan." This custom is the 
basis of the poetical comparison in the first Psalm ; wicked 
people are there likened to "the chaff which the wind 
driveth away." As the heavy grain falls on the floor, the 
women gather it up and sift it through different grades of 
sieves, after which the men put it into sacks. 

Thus the farming of to-day in Palestine is much as it 
was in Isaiah's time twenty-six hundred years ago. No 
greater contrast to the science of farming as practiced in 
America could anywhere be seen. 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For a description of farming in Palestine, see 

Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine. 

Whitney, J. D. "Village Life in the Holy Land," in the National 
Geographic Magazine, March, 1914. (Beautifully illustrated.) 

Kaleel, Mousa J. When I was a Boy in Palestine, pp. 139- 
142. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company. 60 cents. 

For a comparison of the Hebrews with the Greeks, see 

Fowler. History of the Literature of Ancient Israel, pp. 167, 
168, 268. 

[140] 




bJD W> 



'* 8 



* m 



SELECTION XVI. THE POEM OF THE FARMER 
Isa. xxviii, 23-29. 

It was one of Israel's great crises with her enemies 
which is represented in this twenty-eighth chapter of the 
Book of Isaiah. In order to bring the counselors of the 
king back to their senses, a poem of the farm is intro- 
duced to prove that, just as farmers obey the laws of nature 
in plowing and sowing and harvesting, so God is a God 
of law and order, of cause and effect, everywhere, and that 
wrongdoing and foolish advice will lead to ruin in the 
councils of a nation just as surely as on the farm. In this 
poem the first stanza describes how plowing and sowing 
and harvesting follow each other in orderly succession ; 
the second describes how different kinds of grain are 
treated differently in threshing. 

Listen, and hear my voice, 

Give heed and hear my word ; 

Is the plowman ever plowing ? 

Is he ever breaking up and harrowing his ground ? 

Does he not, when he has leveled its surface, 

Scatter fennel and sow cummin 1 

And plant there wheat and barley, 

And spelt 2 as its border ? 

1 The seed of the cummin is used as a spice mixed with bread and 
boiled in stews. The black seeds of the fennel flower, or fitch, are used 
as a condiment. They are hot to the taste and are sprinkled thickly 
over flat cakes before they are baked, much as we use caraway seed 
(Tristram). 

2 Spelt is one of the ordinary cereals of the East and closely resem- 
bles wheat, but has a coarser and rougher sheath and a longer beard. 

[mi] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

For Jehovah hath taught him the right way; 

It is his God who has instructed him. 

For fennel is not threshed with sledges, 

Nor is a cart wheel rolled over cummin, 

But fennel is threshed with a staff, 

And cummin with the flail. 1 

Is grain for bread crushed to pieces ? 

Nay, one does not thresh it forever, 

But when he has driven his cart wheel over it, 

He spreads it out so that it is not crushed fine. 

This also proceeds from Jehovah of hosts. 

Wonderful counsel, great wisdom hath he. 2 

Hebrew literature is not the only literature in which we 
find religion and labor wedded in practice and in preach- 
ing. In the story " Lorna Doone " we find a charming 
description of the beginning of the harvest. John Ridd, 
the farmer, is telling the tale : how all the parish had 
gathered with their sickles in his yard (for it was his 
turn to open the harvest season) ; how the procession of 
harvesters started for the field in proper order — the parson 
in the lead, wearing his gown and cassock, with the parish 
Bible in his hand and a sickle strapped behind him ; how 
before they began to put their sickles to the wheat the 
parson first read some verses from the Bible and then laid 
the Bible down and " despite his gown and cassock, three 
good swipes he cut " ; and then how the owner of the 
field followed, saying, " Thank the Lord for all His mercies 

1 The seeds of both cummin and fennel are very small and tender, 
and would be crushed beyond use if threshed like hard corn with a 
heavy roller, but cummin seed can easily be separated from its thin case 
by being beaten with a slender rod, while fennel seed is enclosed in a 
harder pod and requires a stouter staff to dislodge it (Tristram). 

2 Kent's translation. 

[I 4 2] 



THE POEM OF THE FARMER 

and these the first fruits of His hand " ; and finally 
how the clerk of the parish lined off a psalm, verse by 
verse, which they all sang, and then they fell to work. At 
evening, when they had wiped their sickles and hung 
them up, they came to the house for the harvest supper. 
The parson said the grace and helped to carve. After 
they had satisfied their "brave appetites" they lifted on 
high "a neck of corn, dressed with ribbons gaily, and set 
it upon the mantelpiece" and sang around it the Exmoor 
Harvest Song : 

The wheat, oh the wheat, 't is the ripening of the wheat ! 
All the day it has been hanging down its heavy head, 
Bowing over on our bosoms with a beard of red ; 
'T is the harvest and the value makes the labor sweet. 

Chorus 
The wheat, oh the wheat, and the golden, golden wheat ! 
Here 's to the wheat, with the loaves upon the board ! 
We 've been reaping all the day, and we never will be beat, 
But fetch it all to mow-yard, and then we '11 thank the Lord. 

This is a good example of an old English custom much 
like some of the ancient customs of the Hebrew people. 

The only fragment of a rhymed song in the whole Old 
Testament has recently been discovered by scholars, in 
Hosea viii, 7. It is a very difficult passage to translate 
on account of the condition of the manuscript. Our older 
versions do not give the poetry of it. Probably it ran some- 
what like this : A cornstalk all yel i ow 

Brings no meal to a fellow ; 

But if grains should bend it, 

The wild ox would end it. 

This must have been an old proverb of the farmer. 

[143] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For comments on Isaiah xxviii, 23-2Q, see 

International Critical Commentary, "Isaiah." 

Students' Old Testament : " Sermons, Epistles and Apocalypses 

of the Prophets." 
The Bible for Home and School : " Isaiah." 
Driver. Isaiah: his Life and Times, pp. 52, 53. 
Smith. Isaiah, Vol. I, chap, viii, sec. 4, " God's Commonplace." 

For cummin, fennel, spelt, wheat, barley, etc., see 

Tristram. Natural History of the Bible. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For comparison with harvest customs described in English litera- 
ture, see 

Blackmore, R. D. Lorna Doone, Vol. I, chap. xxix. (The Ex- 
moor Harvest Song is given here in full.) 

For the rhymed translation of Hosea viii, 7, see 

Duhm, Bernhard. The Twelve Prophets, p. 99. The Mac- 
millan Company, New York. $1.25. 



[144] 



SELECTION XVII. THE FIELDS OF BETHLEHEM 
AND THE STORY OF RUTH 

The Book of Ruth 

And it came to pass in the days when the judges judged, that 
there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem- 
judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife, and 
his two sons. And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the 
name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and 
Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem-judah. And they came into the 
country of Moab, and continued there. And Elimelech, Naomi's 
husband, died ; and she was left, and her two sons. And they took 
them wives of the women of Moab ; the name of the one was Orpah, 
and the name of the other Ruth : and they dwelt there about ten 
years. And Mahlon and Chilion died both of them ; and the woman 
was left of her two children and of her husband. 

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return 
from the country of Moab: for she had heard in the country of 
Moab how that Jehovah had visited his people in giving them bread. 
And she went forth out of the place where she was, and her two 
daughters-in-law with her ; and they went on the way to return unto 
the land of Judah. And Naomi said unto her two daughters-in-law, 
Go, return each of you to her mother's house : Jehovah deal kindly 
with you, as ye have dealt with the dead and with me. Jehovah grant 
you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband. 
Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voice, and wept. 
And they said unto her, Nay, but we will return with thee unto thy 
people. And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters : why will ye 
go with me ? have I yet sons in my womb, that they may be your 
husbands? Turn again, my daughters, go your way; for I am too 
old to have a husband. If I should say, I have hope, if I should 

[145] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

even have a husband to-night, and should also bear sons ; would ye 
therefore tarry till they were grown ? would ye therefore stay from 
having husbands? nay, my daughters; for it grieveth me much for 
your sakes, for the hand of Jehovah is gone forth against me. And 
they lifted up their voice, and wept again: and Orpah kissed her 
mother-in-law ; but Ruth clave unto her. 

And she said, Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people, 
and unto her god : return thou after thy sister-in-law. And Ruth said, 

Entreat me not to leave thee, 

Or to return from following after thee ; 

For whither thou goest, I will go ; 

And where thou lodgest, I will lodge ; 

Thy people shall be my people, 

And thy God, my God ; 

Where thou diest, will I die, 

And there will I be buried ; 

The Lord do so to me, 

And more also, 

If aught but death part thee and me. 

And when she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, 
she left off speaking unto her. 

So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came to 
pass, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved 
about them, and the women said, Is this Naomi ? And she said unto 
them, Call me not Naomi, 1 call me Mara 2 ; for the Almighty hath 
dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and Jehovah hath brought 
me home again empty ; why call ye me Naomi, seeing Jehovah hath 
testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me ? So Naomi 
returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, with her, who 
returned out of the country of Moab : and they came to Bethlehem 
in the beginning of barley harvest. 

And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband's, a mighty man of 
wealth, of the family of Elimelech ; and his name was Boaz. And 

1 That is, M pleasant." 2 That is, "bitter." 

[i 4 6] 



BETHLEHEM AND THE STORY OF RUTH 

Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and 
glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find 
favor. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter. And she went, and 
came and gleaned in the field after the reapers : and her hap was to 
light on the portion of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the 
family of Elimelech. And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and 
said unto the reapers, Jehovah be with you. And they answered him, 
Jehovah bless thee. Then said Boaz unto his servant that was set 
over the reapers, Whose damsel is this? And the servant that was 
set over the reapers answered and said, It is the Moabitish damsel 
that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab: and she 
said, Let me glean, I pray you, and gather after the reapers among 
the sheaves. So she came, and hath continued even from the morn- 
ing until now, save that she tarried a little in the house. 

Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Hearest thou not, my daughter? Go 
not to glean in another field, neither pass from hence, but abide here 
fast by my maidens. Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, 
and go thou after them : have I not charged the young men that they 
shall not touch thee ? and when thou art athirst, go unto the vessels, 
and drink of that which the young men have drawn. Then she fell 
on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, 
Why have I found favor in thy sight, that thou shouldest take knowl- 
edge of me, seeing I am a foreigner ? And Boaz answered and said 
unto her, It hath fully been showed me, all that thou hast done unto 
thy mother-in-law since the death of thy husband ; and how thou hast 
left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art 
come unto a people that thou knewest not heretofore. Jehovah recom- 
pense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of Jehovah, the God 
of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to take refuge. Then she 
said, Let me find favor in thy sight, my lord ; for that thou hast com- 
forted me, and for that thou hast . spoken kindly unto thy handmaid, 
though I be not as one of thy handmaidens. 

And at meal-time Boaz said unto her, Come hither, and eat of the 
bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the 
reapers ; and they reached her parched grain, and she did eat, and 
was sufficed, and left thereof. And when she was risen up to glean, 

[147] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Boaz commanded his young men, saying, Let her glean even among 
the sheaves, and reproach her not. And also pull out some for her 
from the bundles, and leave it, and let her glean, and rebuke her not. 
So she gleaned in the field until even ; and she beat out that which 
she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. And she took 
it up, and went into the city ; and her mother-in-law saw what she 
had gleaned : and she brought forth and gave to her that which she 
had left after she was sufficed. And her mother-in-law said unto her, 
Where hast thou gleaned to-day ? and where hast thou wrought ? 
blessed be he that did take knowledge of thee. And she showed her 
mother-in-law with whom she had wrought, and said, The man's name 
with whom I wrought to-day is Boaz. And Naomi said unto her 
daughter-in-law, Blessed be he of Jehovah, who hath not left off his 
kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said unto her, 
The man is nigh of kin unto us, one of our near kinsmen. And Ruth 
the Moabitess said, Yea, he said unto me, Thou shalt keep fast by my 
young men, until they have ended all my harvest. And Naomi said 
unto Ruth her daughter-in-law, It is good, my daughter, that thou 
go out with his maidens, and that they meet thee not in any other 
field. So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz, to glean unto the 
end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest ; and she dwelt with her 
mother-in-law. 

Goethe said that the Book of Ruth is the loveliest little 
idyl which has come down to us through the ages. It has 
received praise from all students of literature because it is 
so simple and sincere, with the quaint background of long 
ago, and the sweetness of an unaffected country romance. 
There is no art for art's sake in this little masterpiece, 
and yet it is one of the most truly artistic bits of literature 
that can be found anywhere, one of the best told and most 
beautiful stories in all the world. Three figures stand out 
conspicuously in the book — Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz : 
Naomi, the older woman, bearing the scars of many hard 
and sad experiences in life ; Ruth, the young woman, 

[i 4 8] 



BETHLEHEM AND THE STORY OF RUTH 

hopeful, cheerful, loving, and faithful ; and Boaz, well-to- 
do, but unspoiled, large-hearted, and thoughtful for others. 
Of course Ruth is the central figure. Thomas Hood, the 
English poet, wrote a poem about her, beginning thus : 

She stood breast high amid the corn, 
Clasped by the golden light of morn, 
Like the sweetheart of the sun, 
Who many a glowing kiss had won. 

True it is that Ruth has been the sweetheart of Bible 
lovers. The whole story is established forever in the 
hearts of all who love nobility and romance. 

There are two themes which underlie this story. When 
one reaches the close of the book and reads that Ruth was 
the great-grandmother of David, a real purpose for the 
story appears. At a later time in Jewish history great 
stress was laid upon the Hebrew marriage law commanding 
all true Hebrews to marry into their own race. Men who 
had married foreign wives were even asked to divorce them, 
although they might have happy homes. Many men ob- 
jected to such strictness and, of course, if they could show 
that their most honored and beloved hero, King David, 
had foreign blood in his veins, they had a strong argu- 
ment on their side. But this object in the story is not so 
apparent to us, at our time, as the subordinate theme 
which comes out in the very beginning of the tale — Ruth's 
loyalty to the woman she loved better than any one else. 
" The warp and woof of the story is the friendship between 
two women, and the grand climax up to which all is 
working is the birth of a baby," 1 that baby of course being 
the grandfather of David. Some of David's finest traits 

1 Professor Moulton in " The Modern Reader's Bible." 
[M9] 






OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

have been traced to Ruth, as, for example, his loyal love for 
his friend Jonathan, and the rich vein of poetic feeling that 
comes out in the earliest Psalms which are attributed to him. 

The fountains of Hebraic song 

Are in thy heart, fair Ruth, 

Fountains whose tides are deep and strong 

In deathless love and truth. 1 

The fitting background for such a beautiful pastoral as 
this charming story of Ruth is Bethlehem, one of the most 
noted and most frequently visited places in Palestine. It 
lies five miles south of Jerusalem and was the home of 
David's boyhood and the birthplace of Jesus. The name 
Bethlehem means " place of bread." Except in favored 
spots, the Judean plateau is rugged and waterless. The 
farmers raise their crops in the valleys between the ridges, 
where the fields spread out to some extent and where 
springs are to be found. Of all the sites in Judea for a 
good farm Bethlehem is the best. It is on the top of the 
plateau which rises from the low hills on the west and 
descends very rapidly to the rough wilderness on the east 
which borders the Dead Sea. On either side there are 
deep valleys with steep, rocky sides, but here the hills are 
rounded, the valley is shallow, and there is plenty of room 
for wheat fields. Near by is an ever-running brook along 
which the most luscious fruit is grown. Here are the 
famous Gardens and Pools of Solomon. Here, too, some 
of the finest honey in the world is made, the bees finding 
a harvest in these fragrant meadows and giving Palestine 
the reputation of being "a land flowing with milk and 
honey." Bee culture was doubtless known here in very 

1 See Essay on Ruth in " The Bible as Literature." 

[150] 



BETHLEHEM AND THE STORY OF RUTH 

ancient times, for in the Love Song of Solomon, where his 
Pleasure Gardens make the scenery of the poem, he sings, 

Thy lips, O my bride, drop as the honeycomb : 
Honey and milk are under thy tongue. 1 

This spot is called " a little paradise " and is a most 
appropriate setting for the verse, 

Rise up, 

My love, 

My fair one, 

And come away, 

For lo, the winter is past. 

The rain is over and gone ; 

The flowers appear on the earth ; 

The time of the singing of birds is come, 

And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land ; 

The fig tree ripeneth her green figs, 

And the vines are in blossom, 

They give forth their fragrance. 2 

It is about a half hour's walk from these Gardens of 
Solomon to the fields of Bethlehem where Solomon's rustic 
ancestors, Ruth and Boaz, carried on their courtship. Boaz 
was one of the well-to-do farmers of this valley, and it was 
probably in the month of May that he was harvesting his 
grain, for in Palestine wheat is sown in the fall, as is our 
winter wheat, and matures very quickly after the spring 
rains. The Psalmist tries to show God's loving desire for 
his people in the following verse : 

He would feed them also with the finest of the wheat ; 
And with honey out of the rock would he satisfy them. 3 

1 Song of Songs iv, u. 

2 Song of Songs ii, 10-13, Moulton's arrangement. 

3 Ps. lxxxi, 16, American Revised Version, with Briggs's change in 
the pronouns. 

[151] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

Surely the writer of this out-of-doors story of Ruth shows 
how a simple, loyal, country maiden was rewarded for her 
faithful love. 

The first part of the story tells how Ruth, the Moabitess, a 
woman of an alien race, came to make her home in Bethle- 
hem and to become the ancestress of David. Bethlehem 
was Naomi's home, but even here in this comparatively 
fertile spot sometimes the drought, which is Palestine's 
worst enemy, would continue for so long a time that poor 
people, with their very primitive methods of farming, could 
not find enough to eat. Then it was that, time and time 
again, the Israelites were tempted to leave their native land 
and seek other homes, where the pasture would be more 
abundant and there would be bread enough for the children. 
Moab, the land east of Jordan, was always considered one 
of the best pasture grounds, and Naomi and her husband 
had migrated thither to bring up their family. Here they 
had lived ten years, and the two boys had grown up and 
married, when great sorrow came to the home. The hus- 
band and sons all died, and of course the natural thing for 
Naomi to do was to go back to her relatives in Bethlehem. 
Ruth's reply to Naomi when she was starting out on her 
journey home has become justly famous. It is true poetry, 
a "musical entreaty" cast in verse form. The whole book 
is a prose poem, but here the story breaks into rhythm. 

Entreat me not to leave thee, 
Or to return from following after thee ; 
For whither thou goest, I will go ; 
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge ; 
Thy people shall be my people, 
And thy God, my God ; 

[152] 



BETHLEHEM AND THE STORY OF RUTH 

Where thou diest, will I die, 

And there will I be buried ; 

The Lord do so to me, 

And more also, 

If aught but death part thee and me. 

These immortal words were perhaps the nucleus of the 
tale, sung over and over by one generation to the next, 
until some gifted writer imbedded it in enduring literature. 
It has now become one of two classic expressions of loyal 
attachment, the other being David's Lament over Jonathan, 1 
who, we are told, loved David " as his own soul." 2 

The scene in the wheat fields where Ruth ventures forth 
as a gleaner, according to the custom of the times, is so 
nearly like the very scenes in that vicinity to-day, that 
travelers have almost felt they have met Ruth and Boaz 
themselves. If one happens to come into a wheat field at 
mealtime he is likely to be invited to sit down with the 
farmer under a booth made of branches, while the farmer's 
wife and children prepare and serve what to us seems much 
like a picnic lunch. A wild pigeon cooked on a stick over 
a fire of twigs will perhaps be the pikce de resistance. But 
"the out-of-door luxury" of Palestine is parched wheat — 
sure to be a part of the menu. The children are sent to the 
field to gather some of the finest heads of the grain. The 
mother takes them and, placing them upon a few wisps of 
straw, reaches for a live coal from the fire, with which she 
lights the straw. The blaze sets fire to the hairs and hulls 
of the wheat and parches the kernels. The hot heads of 
grain are then rubbed in the hand until the blackened 
kernels are released from the stalk, and then the hostess 

1 2 Sam. i, 17-27. 2 1 Sam. xviii, 1. 

[153] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

passes these kernels to her guest on a wicker plate. Such 
a meal was probably much like that of Ruth in the fields 
of Boaz, when " she sat beside the reapers and they reached 
her parched grain, and she did eat and was sufficed." 1 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For estimates of the Book of Ruth, see 

McFadyen. An Introduction to the Old Testament. A. C. Arm- 
strong & Son, New York. $1.50. 

Fowler. History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 

Jessup, A. E., and Canby, H. S. Book of the Short Story, in- 
troduction, p. 4. D. Appleton and Company, New York. $1.10. 

Moulton. Modern Reader's Bible : " Biblical Idyls." 

The Bible as Literature, essay v, " Ruth and Esther." 

For a description of Bethlehem and the country aroimd it, see 

Baldensperger. The Immovable East, chap, v, " The Gardens 

of Solomon." 
Bible dictionaries. 

For bee-keeping in Palestine, see 

Baldensperger. The Immovable East, introduction and chap, v, 
" The Gardens of Solomon." 

For parching wheat and for other customs mentioned i?i Ruth, see 

Huntington. Palestine and its Transformation, p. 142. 
Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine, p. 86. 
Kaleel. When I was a Boy in Palestine, pp. 139-142. 
Whitney. "Village Life in the Holy Land," in the National 

Geographic Magazine, March, 191 4. 
Bible dictionaries, arts. " Parched Wheat " and " Food." 

1 Ruth ii, 14. 



[154] 



SELECTION XVIII. THE SONG OF THE VINEYARD 

Isa. v, 1-7 

Every nation has its early poetry. The poetic instinct 
seems born in men, for they must sing at their work, and 
at their play, and even when they fight. So we find har- 
vest songs, hunting songs, and battle songs in early liter- 
ature. Primitive people seem to have been able to do 
everything better to music. To its rhythm they could 
march in better step, they could swing their sickles more 
regularly and tread the grapes more joyously. It is true 
that the great hymn book of the Hebrews, our Book of 
Psalms, is made up of songs which were used in worship, 
but this collection was not made until comparatively late 
in their history. Sprinkled throughout the Old Testament 
we find remains of an old folk poetry — labor songs, dirges 
over the dead, wedding songs, and snatches of popular 
poetry sung in the streets — which make it clear that 
Hebrew literature, like every other great literature, was 
born from a feeling for the rhythms of life. Here fact 
and fancy, the real and the ideal, activity and repose, 
righteousness and peace, kiss each other and become 
friends, even as the Old Testament itself rhythmically 
and poetically expresses this deep truth of human nature. 1 
The moment a literature lapses into a purely didactic 
expression, an utterly prosaic style, that moment it ceases 

1 Ps. lxxxv, 10. 

[155] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

to be great, because it is untrue to life, and because it has 
lost its appeal to human beings created upon the rhythmic 
plan. The life of ancient peoples may seem slow to us 
who live so fast, but it certainly was not dull or monoto- 
nous to them when, for the very joy of living, they sang 
at work and play. Hebrew literature is great literature and 
will never lose its appeal, because it is primarily poetic, 
not prosaic. In our older versions of the Bible the poetic 
quality has been largely obscured by the way the transla- 
tions were printed. Now scholars translate so much more 
accurately that the fragments of old folk songs imbedded 
in various books, as well as the one long and complete 
collection of hymns, are printed as poetry. 

Of all the labor songs presented to us in the Old Testa- 
ment, those which were sung in the vineyards and at the 
grape festivals seem to have been the most popular. Even 
to-day this is the happiest time of the year among the 
peasant people, and joyful choruses ring out over the ter- 
raced hillsides as the laborers gather the fruit of the vine. 
Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard is doubtless based upon 
this type of folk song. 

To understand the allusions in Isaiah's poem we need 
to know something concerning the way they planted vine- 
yards in those days. Grape raising was in ancient times, 
and still is, one of the most important of the industries 
of Palestine. Many varieties of luscious grapes are culti- 
vated ; one greenish-white grape measures from one half 
to two thirds of an inch in diameter ; another, olive-shaped 
and white, resembles the Malaga grape ; another is dark 
purple and of the size of a small prune ; there is a vari- 
ety similar to the Black Hamburg ; another kind, with 

[156] 



THE SONG OF THE VINEYARD 

a green rind, is striped with red, with a pulp almost as 
firm as that of an apple ; another resembles the famous 
Zante currant and still another the Isabella grape — and 
all this variety does not exhaust the shapes, sizes, and 
flavors. To-day the finest grapes to be bought in Jerusa- 
lem come from near Hebron, and remind one of the story 
of the grapes of Eshcol in the Book of Numbers. Grapes are 
eaten very freely during August, September, and October, 
and even up to December. The price is a cent a pound 
when cheap, gradually creeping up to as much as six cents. 
Vineyards flourish best on terraced hillsides, and there- 
fore are especially adapted to Palestine. They are found on 
the Judean hills and on the slopes of Mount Carmel and the 
Lebanons and over the rolling country of Samaria. They 
do very well without rain, especially if there is a good sub- 
soil. They are cultivated in a variety of ways. Sometimes 
the vines are trained over a trellis or made to climb a tree ; 
sometimes they are fastened to stakes about the height of 
a man, the branches spreading out laterally and forming 
festoons ; but more often the stem trails on the surface 
of the soil, and the cluster-bearing branches are supported 
by forked sticks sufficiently to keep them off the ground. 
Of course in this rocky country the land for a vineyard 
has first to be cleared of stones ; after the planting, a fence 
or hedge of some sort must be placed around the vineyard, 
and a watchtower erected to keep off wild animals and 
thieves. Sometimes, to frighten away the animals, a large 
stone three or four feet high is set up and whitewashed at 
the top so that it can be seen at night. The watchman 
often places a thin row of fine stones along the top of his 
wall in such a way that a thief would rattle them down 

[157] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

and waken him in the night. A wine vat, or press, is dug 
out of the hard soil or excavated in the rock. There the 
juice of the ripe grapes is trodden out to be made into 
wine. Of course this stains the clothes of the workmen. 
There are numerous references in the Old Testament to 
this treading of the wine press. One of the most graphic 
is in the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet 
sees the Man of Vengeance coming to save the people 
from injustice. 

Who is this that cometh from Edom, with crimsoned garments 
from Bozrah ? this that is glorious in his apparel, marching in the 
greatness of his strength? 

I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. 

Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like 
him that treadeth in the winevat? 

I have trodden the winepress alone ; and of the peoples there was 
no man with me : yea, I trod them in mine anger, and trampled them 
in my wrath ; and their lif eblood is sprinkled upon my garments, 
and I have stained all my raiment. 1 

The season at the wine-making is one of great joy. It 
begins in some places as early as July, but the most of 
the grapes are fully ripe in August and September ; the 
peasants use the expression "In Grapes" for the month of 
August. Booths of boughs are then built within the vine- 
yards for the workmen to sleep in, and whole families go 
to the vineyards to live. There is constant singing and 
shouting, and this season is the happiest of the year. 

It was probably at some great national feast-day at the 
close of the vintage season — very likely in Jerusalem, 
where the people from the country had gathered for the 
occasion — that Isaiah assumed the role of popular singer 

1 American Revised Version, with marginal reading. 

[158] 



THE SONG OF THE VINEYARD 

in the street or market place, in order to attract the crowd 
and make them listen to his message of justice. Here he 
sang this Love Song of the Vineyard, and then pointed 
his moral. We must remember that his prophecies are 
almost without exception poems or poetic fragments. 
Isaiah has been classed with Dante and Shakespeare 
among the world's immortal poets. 

A song will I sing of my friend, 
A love-song touching his vineyard. 

A vineyard belongs to my friend, 

On a hill that is fruitful and sunny ; 

He digged it and cleared it of stones, 

And planted there vines that are choice ; 

A tower he built in the midst, 

And hewed out therein a wine-vat ; 

And he looked to find grapes that are good, 

Alas ! it bore grapes that are wild. 

Ye, in Jerusalem dwelling, 

And ye, who are freemen of Judah, 

Judge ye, I pray, between me 

And the vineyard which I have cherished. 

What could have been done for my vineyard 

That I had not done ? 

When I looked to find grapes that are good, 

Why bore it grapes that are wild ? 

And now let me give you to know 

What I purpose to do to my vineyard : 

I will take away its hedge, 

That it be eaten up. 

I will break through its walls, 

That it be trodden down ; 

Yea, I will make it a waste, 

Neither pruned nor weeded ; 

[159] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

It shall shoot up thorns and briers, 

And the clouds will I enjoin that they rain not upon it. 

For the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts is the house of Israel, 

And the men of Judah his cherished plantation ; 

And he looked for justice, but behold ! bloodshed, 

For righteousness, and behold ! an outcry. 1 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For folk songs, see 

Gordon. The Poets of the Old Testament, chap, ii, " The Folk 
Poetry of Israel." 

For interpretation and comments upon the Song of the Vineyard, 
see 

Fowler. History of the Literature of Ancient Israel. 
Gordon. The Poets of the Old Testament. 
The Bible for Home and School, " Isaiah." 
Students' Old Testament : "Sermons, Epistles and Apocalypses of 
the Prophets." 

Driver. Isaiah : his Life and Times, pp. 26, 27. 

Smith. Isaiah, Vol. I, chap, iii, " The Vineyard of the Lord." 

International Critical Commentary, " Isaiah." 

For vineyards and grape raising in Palestine, see 

Grant. The Peasantry of Palestine. 
Baldensperger. The Immovable East, p. 283. 
Tristram. Natural History of the Bible. 
Bible dictionaries. 

1 Cheyne's translation, Polychrome Bible. 



[160] 



SELECTION XIX. THE SHEPHERD PSALM 

Ps. xxiii (Ps. xxii, Douay) 

Another Hebrew poem which has sunk so deep into 
the heart life of English-speaking people that it can never 
be forgotten is the twenty-third Psalm, or the twenty- 
second in the Douay version. There is a reason for this 
beyond the mere fact of its beautiful sentiment. It is great 
from the standpoint of religious feeling, but it is great also 
as lyric poetry. Lyric poetry is the short, passionate out- 
burst of personal feeling in poetic form. Hebrew poetry 
found its best expression in the lyric, and there are no 
lyrics in the world's literature that surpass some of the 
Psalms. The twenty-third Psalm has been called "the 
sweetest of all the Psalms," and to many people it is so 
precious that should they lose all else in the Bible, — nay all 
else in literature, — they would cling to the twenty-third 
Psalm as worth more than volumes. The same thought 
has been expressed many times in other ways, but nowhere 
more simply and musically and nowhere with such beautiful 
imagery and such depth of feeling. For a poem to be re- 
membered by the common folk and become immortal, not 
only among the literati but for the unlettered as well, it 
must be musical, and the twenty-third Psalm sings itself. 

Dr. Van Dyke tells us that Hebrew poetry has three 
striking characteristics, a deep and genuine love of nature, 
a passionate sense of the beauty of holiness, and an intense 

[161] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

joy in God. The twenty-third Psalm embodies all three 
of these qualities. It is one of the most charming of pas- 
torals and must have been written out of the heart experi- 
ence of a true shepherd. We love to associate it with the 
Shepherd King of Israel. The first half fits in most per- 
fectly with David's early life, and the latter half, which 
passes from the figure of the shepherd to that of a host 
entertaining his friend, fits in with some of David's expe- 
riences as king. The gifted musician who could play away 
the evil moods of King Saul would seem alone the rightful 
one to whom to attribute such power of throwing the magic 
spell over the whole heart-sick world. It is at any rate 
one of the very earliest of the Psalms and belongs to the 
Davidic collection. The best scholars think it must have 
been written in the days of the early monarchy, 1 because 
of its simplicity of diction and its reflection of the childlike 
faith of people living in the open. 

To understand it completely, however, one should know 
something not only about the habits of the shepherds but 
also about the sheep of the East, for the East has always 
been the land of sheep. Sheep were of the greatest im- 
portance to the Israelites in the early days of their history, 
while they were strictly a pastoral people ; and even down 
to the present day the raising of sheep is one of the main 
industries of Palestine, especially on the eastern plateaus, 
where the Bedouins drive their flocks over the fenceless 
fields wherever they can find pasture. This was the con- 
dition over the whole of Palestine in the days of the patri- 
archs, whose possessions were numbered by the sheep they 

1 Professor Briggs, in the International Critical Commentary, thinks 
it was written in Solomon's reign. 

[162] 



THE SHEPHERD PSALM 

had, the number sometimes mounting into the thousands. 
Sheep may be counted by the thousands to-day over on the 
eastern plateau. It is an impressive sight in early spring, 
when the grass first shoots up in all its freshness, to see 
countless flocks stretching out for miles over the hills and 
valleys. The Bedouin tribes from far and near still gather 
in this locality, and their wealth in sheep seems boundless. 
In olden times Abraham and Isaac were very rich men in 
the eyes of their neighbors — not because they had money, 
but because they owned so many flocks. Indeed sheep 
were then used in place of money. We read that the king 
of Moab at one time was obliged to pay the king of Israel 
an annual tribute of one hundred thousand lambs and the 
same number of rams. 1 Sheep have always been used for 
food ; Solomon's household consumed one hundred a day. 
Amos complains that the pampered rich of his time would 
eat nothing but the lambs out of the flock, just as the epi- 
cure of our day demands sirloin steak or quail on toast. 
The milk is used to drink and for making butter and 
cheese. The skin is used for coats — a great protection 
against wind and rain — and for making bottles for all 
kinds of liquids. Wool has been one of the constant staples 
of trade in Palestine ; it is spun and woven into cloth of all 
descriptions. The long, curved horns of the rams are used 
for trumpets, oil-flasks, and powderhorns. The sheep has 
always been the chief animal sacrificed to the gods. It is 
supposed that this originated not only from the idea of 
giving from one's possessions an offering to the deity but 
from the friendly communion of spirit which comes at a 
feast or meal ; that is, it is the symbol not merely for sin 

1 2 Kings iii, 4. 

[163] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

atoned for but also for friendly intercourse of soul between 
man and his god. The sheep seems to have been reserved 
for sacrifice, for special festivities, and for welcoming a 
friend or stranger as a guest. This is done to-day by Ori- 
entals, a lamb or calf being prepared as a delicacy, just as 
Abraham " ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender 
and good, and took butter and milk, and the calf which he 
had dressed," and set it before the angels who visited him. 1 
The butter mentioned here and elsewhere in the Old Tes- 
tament was not like the hard butter we eat spread upon 
our bread, but is supposed to have been like that made in 
Palestine to-day. After the women have milked the sheep 
or goats, they put the milk into a goatskin bottle, which 
has clots of sour milk from a previous churning still adher- 
ing to its sides. Then the skin is hung upon a tripod of 
sticks and shaken vigorously back and forth until the but- 
ter " comes." When taken out of the skin, this butter is 
very white ; the use of butter color is not yet fashionable in 
Palestine. It is now boiled and turned into what is known 
with us as clarified butter. This they use for cooking 
purposes, and it is much prized in the culinary arts of the 
East. They also use fresh butter, which is eaten mixed 
with sugar or honey or a kind of molasses made from 
grapes and is served in a bowl into which each person 
dips his piece of bread as he eats. When Isaiah tells 
of the butter and honey that shall form the staple food 
for every one left in the land, he is evidently speaking 
of this fresh butter mixed with honey, which was the 
food common to the poor who had only goat's milk and 
honey to depend upon. 2 

1 Gen. xviii, 7,8. See also 2 Sam. xii, 4. 2 Isa. vii, 15, 22. 

[ 164 ] 



THE SHEPHERD PSALM 

The time of sheepshearing was one of great merry- 
making, celebrated by a special festival. There are vari- 
ous kinds of sheep raised in Palestine — fine, short- wooled 
breeds, somewhat like the Merino, and long, coarse-wooled 
varieties. The kind which has been there from very ancient 
times is the fat-tailed sheep, the immense tail containing 
often as much as ten pounds of fat. This is tried out, pre- 
pared with portions of the lean meat, and packed away for 
winter use. Sheep can find pasturage even in dry weather, 
and they yield milk longer and more abundantly than cows. 
They need to be watered but once a day. 

The relation of a shepherd to his sheep is very intimate 
and tender. He always leads, never drives, them to pas- 
ture and water. At watering time the flocks of various 
shepherds all gather at the stream or spring, and each 
shepherd calls his own sheep by groups. As he draws the 
water for them and pours it into the troughs, they wait 
patiently until a particular group is called, then when that 
group is sent away, the next follows in orderly fashion; 
when the whole flock has been watered, the shepherd gives 
the signal, and all his flock rise and walk away, making 
place at the troughs for the sheep of the next shepherd. 
They are said never to make any mistake as to who calls 
them. Girls are often entrusted with the care of their 
father's flocks, and the watering troughs are often places 
for oriental courtships. It was at one of these wells that Jacob 
fell in love at first sight with Rachel 1 and that Moses first 
met his wife as she and her sisters "came and drew water, 
and filled the troughs to water their father's flock." 2 The 
customs in courtship have not changed in all these years. 

1 Gen. xxix. 2 Exod. ii, 1 6. 

[165] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

The shepherd is most careful of the lambs. He can 
often be seen carrying a lamb under each arm and two or 
three more in the hood of his cloak, as he leads out his 
flock for the day. One of the familiar verses in Isaiah 
truly represents this. 

He will feed his flock like a shepherd, 

He will gather the lambs in his arm, 

And carry them in his bosom, 

And will gently lead those that have their young. 1 

So friendly is the shepherd with his sheep that they have 
the same kind of attachment for him as a dog has for his 
master in this country, and often the shepherds play with 
their sheep the way masters do with their dogs, making 
them run and gambol. Each sheep has a name, and when 
the shepherd calls one, it will answer with a bleat or come 
running up to him, expecting some fresh leaves or a choice 
morsel of bread from his hand. He often risks his life for 
his sheep when they stray away into the deep, dark ravines 
or up a craggy precipice, for they are constantly going 
astray. Isaiah knew their characteristics well when he said, 
"All we like sheep have gone astray ; we have turned every 
one to his own way." 2 In places where there are caves 
these are used as sheepcotes, but in the open fields sheep- 
folds are built, with a wall around them. On account of 
the prowling jackals and other wild beasts it is necessary 
for the shepherd to watch his flocks all night, and the ven- 
turesome traveler who climbs the Lebanons may see on 
the ground the shepherds' beds made of rushes, with sheep- 
skins and rugs for covering, and near by a place for a fire, 

1 Isa. xl, ii. 2 Isa. liii, 6. 

[166] 



THE SHEPHERD PSALM 

with pots and pans for cooking. This is like genuine camp- 
ing out in our country with a hemlock bed for a mattress. 
The Old Testament is full of figures of speech. The 
Hebrews could not think in abstract terms — their most 
profound thoughts about the meaning of life and the exist- 
ence of God had to be expressed in concrete imagery. 
Here is a great contrast between the Greeks with their 
philosophy and the Hebrews with their religion. The 
Greeks loved to reason things out ; the Hebrews did not 
stop to reason, they simply knew things by intuition, just 
as an Indian knows the path through the woods, or as a 
child knows that his mother loves him, or as the sheep 
knows his shepherd. And so the Hebrews expressed their 
deepest feelings about God and his care through symbols. 
Of all the symbols or figures of speech which are used 
in the Bible that of the sheep and the shepherd is the 
most frequent, being found as many as five hundred times. 
It was most natural, therefore, that at some time when the 
Psalmist felt especially helpless and bewildered along the 
path of life he should exclaim, 

The Lord is my Shepherd, 
I shall not want, 

and then go on to think of the way the good shepherd 
found the greenest pastures for his sheep and led them 
up to the still pools where they could drink — for a dash- 
ing mountain brook is very turbulent. On the way when 
they were tired he let them lie down and rest, and when 
they went astray he found the right trail for them, just 
"for his name's sake"; that is, just because he was a 
shepherd. And when the path led through a deep, dark 

[167] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

ravine they were not afraid and did not run or bleat if they 
could see their shepherd ahead, for with his shepherd's 
crook he often lifted a lamb out of a pit and set him on 
his feet again, and with his big staff or club he could even 
knock down a bear. Then the Psalmist began to think of 
one day when he was a shepherd and had brought the 
sheep back to the fold at sunset and was preparing for the 
night. Before he lay down he looked out over the fields 
and saw a man running. He looked again and saw that 
there was no one with the stranger — that he was hurrying 
on alone. He knew what that meant : a man who had by 
mistake killed another was running away from his avenger 
to a city of refuge, where he might be safe. 1 It was the 
unwritten law of hospitality in such cases that the shepherd 
should share his tent at night, bring out the best of his 
flock and give the man a good meal, and send him on his 
way in the morning, asking no questions. If David wrote 
this Psalm, there was a time after he became king when he 
would have looked back to his shepherd's life and thought 
of all this — the time when he had to run away from Jeru- 
salem over to that shepherd's country of Rabbah across 
the Jordan, not because he had killed another, but because 
his own son Absalom wanted to kill him and take the throne. 
We are told that, on this occasion, the Gileadite shep- 
herds " brought beds, and basins, and earthen vessels, and 
wheat, and barley, and meal, and parched grain, and beans, 
and lentils, and parched pulse, and honey, and butter, and 
sheep, and cheese of the herd, for David, and for the people 
that were with him, to eat : for they said, The people are 
hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness." 2 

1 Num. xxxv, 9-12. 2 2 Sam. xvii, 28, 29. 

[168] 



THE SHEPHERD PSALM 

It was no wonder that after it was all over, the poet looked 
back upon such an experience and sang of the goodness 
and loving-kindness that had followed him all his days. 1 
Whoever wrote the poem — whether it was David, or some 
one in Solomon's reign who had come very close to David's 
life experiences, or some other great poet of the open who 
himself had had just such experiences — it is one of the 
most beautiful lyrics we possess. 

The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures ; 
He leadeth me beside still waters. 2 
He restoreth my soul. 

He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 3 
I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me ; 
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies : 

Thou hast anointed my head with oil ; 

My cup runneth over. 

Surely goodness and loving-kindness shall follow me all the days of 

my life ; 
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. 4 

1 This interpretation of the second half of the Psalm, among the 
many that have been offered, seems to be that taken by the best 
scholars (see Professor Briggs in International Critical Commentary 
and Dr. G. A. Smith, Four Psalms). David may not have been the 
author, but for this view, see Dr. Stalker, Psalm of Psalms, introduction, 
and for 2 Sam. xvii, 28, 29, as a fitting background, see Barton, The 
Psalms and their Story. 

2 Or " waters of rest." 

3 Or " deep darkness." 

4 American Revised Version (with the exception of the Lord for 
Jehovah), and Briggs's arrangement. 

[ 169 ] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THE TEACHER OR CLASS 

For an estimate of and comments upon the twenty-third Psalm, see 

Van Dyke, Henry. The Poetry of the Psalms. Thomas Y. 
Crowell Company, New York. 50 cents. 

Stalker, James. The Psalm of Psalms. Charles Scribner's Sons, 
New York. 60 cents. 

Gordon. The Poets of the Old Testament. 

International Critical Commentary, tf Psalms." 

Barton, William E. The Psalms and their Story. The Pilgrim 
Press, Boston. $1.25. 

Smith, George Adam. Four Psalms. George H. Doran Com- 
pany, New York. 50 cents. 

Meyer, F. B. The Shepherd Psalm. Fleming H. Revell Com- 
pany, New York. 50 cents. 

Knight, William Allen. The Song of our Syrian Guest. The 
Pilgrim Press. 50 cents. (This gives another interpretation of 
the latter part of the Psalm from that adopted here.) 

Whitney. " Village Life in the Holy Land," in the National 
Geographic Magazine, March, 19 14. 

For sheep and shepherds, see 

Tristram. Natural History of the Bible. 

Whitney. "Village Life in the Holy Land," in the National 

Geographic Magazine, March, 19 14. 
Bible dictionaries. 

For cities of refuge, see 
Bible dictionaries. 



[I/O] 



INDEX OF BIBLE REFERENCES 



GENESIS 

CHAPTER PAGE CHAPTER PAGE 

xviii, 7, 8 164 xxix 165 

xix, 30 106 xxxvii 25 

xxii, 1-19 32, 38 xxxvii, 25 97, 101 

xxiii, 17 53 xliii, 11 97, 101 

EXODUS 
ii, 16 165 xxxiv, 22, 26 .... 129, 132 



NUMBERS 



xxxv, 9-12 



DEUTERONOMY 



111, 11 104 xxvn, 17 134 

viii, 7-10 129, 131 xxxii, 9-15 97, 99 

JOSHUA 
xiii, 5 • 97 

JUDGES 

iv 60 xv 132 

v 55, 60 xv, 4-17 46 

vi, 11, 12 129, 132 

RUTH 
i, ii 145 ii' 14 IS4 

[171] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 



CHAPTER 



vi, 13 132 

xiii, 5-7, 19 to xiv, 23 . 104, 113 

xiii, 19-23 47 

xvii 41 



1 SAMUEL 

PAGE CHAPTER 
xxii, I, 2 



XXIV 

Xxiv, 



PAGE 
17, 104, 117 
. . . 104 
. . . 110 



2 SAMUEL 

i, 17-27 153 xviii, 9 . 

xii, 4 164 xxiii, 13-17 

xvii, 28, 29 168, 169 xxiii, 20 . 



v, 11 . 

xvii, 1-7 



1 KINGS 

132 xviii, 16-40 



66 



xviii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 41-46 



70.75 
• 75 



xviii, 45 70 

xix, 1-4 70 



i, 8 . . 
ii, 19-22 
iii, 4 . 
iv . . 



2 KINGS 

69 iv, 8-37 93 

94 iv, 38-41 94 

163 v, 1-19 92 

76 



2 CHRONICLES 
ii, 10 138 



JOB 

xx, 15 f¥ 135 xxxix, 19-25 

xxxi, 5 ff 136 



42 



XXll, ] 

xxiii 

xxiv, 

xxix 

xiii, 1 

lxiii, ] 

lxviii, 

lxxxi, 



7-10 



PSALMS 

. 100 Ixxxv, 10 155 

97, 98 xcii, 12 87 

. 161 ciii, 15, 16 119, 120 

32 civ 129 

80 cvii, 4 ff 119, 121 

[9, 121 cxx-cxxxiv 35 

[9, 120 cxxi 3 2 » 37 

97 cxxv, 1, 2 32, 38 

. 151 cxliii, 6-8 119, 122 



[172] 



INDEX OF BIBLE REFERENCES 



CHAPTER 

xxv, 13 



PROVERBS 

PAGE CHAPTER 

84 xxxi, 16 



SONG OF SONGS 



11, 1 . . 
ii, 10-13 
iv, 11 . 



vii, 2, 5, 6 
vii, 4 . . 



PAGE 
I29 



75 
97 



ISAIAH 



"> 13 87 

v 77 

v > J-7 155 

v, 8 133 

xvii, 12-14 21 

xxii, 9-1 1 . 77 

xxiii, 8 67 

xxviii, 1 15 

xxviii, 23-29 77, 141 

xxx, 15-17 32, 41 



xxxi, 1, 3-6 . 
xxxi, 5 . . . 
xxxii, 1-2 
xxxv, 1 . . 
xxxv, 2 . . 
xl .... 
xl, II . . . 
liii, 6 . . . 
Iv .... 
lvii, 8, 9 . . 



3 2 >4i 
119, 



>44 

18 

121 

120 

87 
119 
166 
166 
119 

77 



JEREMIAH 

ii, 13 77 xlvi, 11 102 

viii, 18-22 97, 102 1, 17-19 97, 99 

xiv, 3 77 

EZEKIEL 

xiii, 18 f 136 xxxi, 3 87 

xxvii, 5 87 xxxi, 6 87 

xxvii, 17 101 



HOSEA 



vi, 4. 
viii, 7 
xiii, 3 



84,85 

• 143 

84,85 



xiv, 4-7 
xiv, 5 . 
xiv, 6 . 



87, 90 
. 86 
. 84 



JOEL 
[173] 



ii, 23 if 137 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 

AMOS 

CHAPTER PAGE CHAPTER PAGE 

ii, 9 87 ix, i b-3 a 104, 118 

viii, 4-6 134 

OBADIAH 
verses 3, 4, 10-15 104, 108 

MICAH 
ii, 1, 2 133 iv, 4 131 

HAGGAI 
i» 5> 6 • • • • l 37 i, 6 77 

1 MACCABEES 
i-xvi . . 17, 41 

MATTHEW 
vi, 28-29 53 

LUKE 
ix, 28 ff 86 xii, 27 53 



[174] 



GENERAL INDEX 



Abana, 93 

Abraham, 14, 32, 38, 53, 56, 66, 69, 
104, 163, 164 

Absalom, 53, 101, 168 

Achilles, 67 

Acre, 53, 66, 67 

Adullam, cave of, 116 

Africa, 12, 14, 55, 102, 117 

Agriculture, 129-144 

Agriculturists, 13, 130; see Farmers 

Agrippa I, 105 

Ahab, 69, 78 

Alexander, 17, 47 

Almond, 85 

Alphabet, 67 

American, 18, 57 

Amorite, 87 

Amos, 69, 87, 118, 129, 134, 163 

Anathoth, 129 

Anemone, 10, 50, 52, 53 

Angels, 81, 164 

Anglo-Saxons, 46 

Animals, see Fauna 

Anti-Lebanon, 89 note 

Apollo, temple of, 88 

" Appledore, Pictures from," 22 

Apricot, 11, 46 

Aqueduct, 15 

Arabia, 14, 26, 66, 97 

Arabian Nights, 14 

Arabic, 84 

Arabs, 49, 88, 102, 105, 106, 139 

Arbutus, 100 

Ark, 33, 132 

Armies, 15, 21, 22, 25, 26, 55 

Arnon, 55, 100 

Art, 67 note, 117, 119, 148; culi- 
nary, 164 

Aryan, 46, 47 

Ashkelon, 47 

Asia, 12, 14, 55 



Asia Minor, 15 

Ass, 50-52 

Assyria, 10, 15, 17, 18, 22, 25, 42 

Assyrians, 41, 43, 87 

Astronomy, 68 

Baal, 68-71, 78, 92 

Babylon, 121, 122, 124, 136 

Babylonia, 13, 25 

Babylonian captivity, 99 

Babylonians, 15, 33, 107 

Bachelor's-buttons, 10 

Ballads, Book of War, 60 

Balm, 28, 97-103; false, 102 

Balsam, 19, 103 ; see Fir 

Balsamodendron gileadense, 102 

Barak, 58 

Barley, 131, 136, 138, 168 

Bashan, 97-103, 104, 105 

Bat, 11 

Baths, Roman, 15 

Battlefield, 16, 20, 55, 59 

Bears, 11, 85 

Bedouins, 14, 162, 163 

Bedstead of Og, 104 

Bee-keeping, 150 

Beersheba, 48 

Benaiah, 11 

Bethlehem, 129, 145-154 

Beth-Shemesh, 132 

Bible, 53, 102, no, 142, 149, 167; 
English style of, 1, 2 ; as litera- 
ture, 1-3, 60, 161 ; oratory of, 1, 
2; poetry of, 1, 2, 161 ; stories 
of, 27, 50, 69, 92, 108, no, 145, 
148 ; text of, 20 

Biblical times, 99 ; see Society, 
Races, Civilization, etc. 

Birds, 53, 54, 87, 130; see Fauna 

Boadicea, 60 

Boaz, 15, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154 



[175] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 



Booths, 101, 158 
Bottles, 163, 164 
Bulls of Bashan, 97-103 
Burning bush, 69 
Butter, 98, 163, 164, 168 

California, comparison of Pales- 
tine with, 6, 87 

Camels, 11, 25, 28, 101, 139 

Canaan, 56 ; meaning of name, 66 

Canaanites, 56-60, 66 

Candlestick, golden, 103 

Captivity, Babylonian, 99, 124, 136; 
see Exile 

Caravan,|i3,i8,2i,25,26,35,94,i07 

Carmel, Mount, 5, 16, 26,46, 52-55, 
66-78, 118, 120, 157 

Carmelite monks, 76 

Carthage, 67 

Cattle, 97-99, 107 

" Cave of Adullam, The," 117 

Cave men, 15, 33, 104 

Caves, 7, 10-12, 14, 17, 41, 76, 98, 
104-118, 166 

Cedars, 81, 87-90 

Celts, 46 

Chaff, 22, 140 

Chaldees, 66 

Chalk, 104, 115, 116 

Chariots, 16, 41, 42, 55, 56, 58, 70 

Cherries, 85 

Cisterns, 15, 27, 104, 105, 115 

City of refuge, 168 

Civilization, 13-15, 33, 66, 92 

Clans, 15, 17 

Cleopatra, 102 

Climate of Palestine, 5, 6, 11, 19, 76 

Clouds, 71, 80, 81 

Coast, 18, 20-22, 25, 32, 41, 47, 48, 
66, 71 

Coat of many colors, 27, 28 

Colonists, 67 

Commerce, 13 

Contrast in Hebrew literature, 119 

Courtship, 165 

Cradle of the human race, 13 

Crete, 46 

Crocodile, 117 

Crocus, 10 

Crow, 10 



Crusaders, 10, 16, 17 
Cummin, 141 note 
Cyclamen, 9 

Damascus, 13, 20, 25, 93, 97 

Dan, 47, 48 

Danites, 48, 132 

Dante, 159 

David, 17, 32^-34, 41, 47, 70, 88, 

101, 104, 108, 116, 117, 129, 149, 

150, 153, 162, 168, 169 
Dead Sea, 8, 9, 11, 36, 55, 102, 104, 

108, 120, 150 
Deborah, 55-64, 129 
Deer, 11 
Delta, 25 
Deluge-Tablet, 80 
Desert, 7, 12, 19, 26, 69, 78, 97, 

98, 1 1 9-1 28, 129 
Dew, 85, 90, 120 
Diana, temple of, 88 
Divorce, 149 
Dog, 11, 166 
Dog River, 17 
Donkey, 25, 138, 139 
Dothan, 13, 26, 28 
Doves, 11 

Dragon, St. George and the, 17 
Dream, 22, 28 
Dress, 5 

Drought, 19, 76-78, 152 
Druses, 97 

Eagle, 18, 43, 98 

East, the, 13, 18, 20, 26, 28, 102, 164 

Eastern Range, 97, 100 

Edom, 14, 36, 97, 104, 107 

Edomites, 107 

Edrei, 104, 105 

Egypt, 10, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 25, 

26, 28, 41-43, 47, 56, 69, 88, 101, 

107, 117, 131 
Egyptians, 15, 18, 41 
Elijah, 66-78, 92, 101, 129 
Elisha, 76, 92-94, 129 
Endor, Witch of, 113 
Engedi, 108 
English Bible, 1, 2 ; as literature, 

19, 27, 50, 161 
Ephraim, 58, 129 



[176] 



GENERAL INDEX 



Esau, 107 

Esdraelon, 13, 16, 54, 71, 131 
Eshcol, grapes of, 157 
Ethiopians, 15 
Europe, 12, 14, 67, 76 
European, 18, 56 
Exile, 121 ; see Captivity 
Ezekiel, 87, 101, 120, 136 

Famine, 70, 76-78, 101 

Farmers, 77, 85, 101, 130, 131, 133, 

i37> i3 8 » *39> 142, i43> I 5°> 

I5I-I53 
Farming, see Agriculture 
Fauna, 9-12, 20 
Feast, 131, 134, 156, 158, 165 
Fellah, 69, 138 
Fences, 133, 162 
Fennel, 141 note 
Fig, 11, 131 

Figures of speech, 19, 59, 71, 167 
Fir, 11, 19, 122; see Balsam 
Fire, 19 
Firebrand, 49 
Fish, 67, 120 
Fitch, 141 note 
Flocks, 14, 26, 57, 98, 107, 163, 165, 

166, 168; see Sheep 
Flood, 80 

Flora, 5, 6, 9-12, 20 
Flowers, 53, 54, 89, 120; see Flora 
Folk songs, 143, 155, 156 
Folklore, 92 
Forest, cedar, 82, 87-90 ; oak, 53 ; 

deforestation, 88, 89 
Forge, 47 

Fortress of Jerusalem, 18, 19, 32 
Fox, 49, 85 
Foxglove, 53 
France, 46, 60 
Frank, 18 
Frenchmen, 16, 17 

Galilee, hills of, 6, 86 ; Sea of, 8, 

13, no, 113 
Garden, 71, 75 

Gardens of Solomon, 150, 151 
Gaza, 47, 50 
Genesis, 27 
Genius, Hebrew, 119; racial, 119 



Geography, 2, 3, 12, 18; ancient, 
3-4 ; commercial, 4 ; of the Holy 
Land, 17, 18 ; modern, 4; of Pal- 
estine, 2, 3, 5, 90; physical, 19, 20 

Geology, 6-9, 12 

George, St., 17 

German, 27 

German Emperor's trip, 16 

Gideon, 132, 139 

Gilead, 53, 69, 97-103, 104, 105, 129 

Gileadites, 168 

Giraffe, 117 

Girdle, 26, 69 

Glacial period, 6 note 

Gladden, Washington (quoted), 35, 
36 

Gleaning, 15, 153 

Goats, 105, 164 

Goethe (quoted), 148 

God, 19, 21, 32-34, 37-39, 43, 69- 
71, 76, 77, 82, 89, 90, 94, 99, 120, 
121, 130,138,141, 151,162, 167; 
see Jehovah 

Gods, 39, 69, 70, 92, 95, 163 

Goldfinch, n 

Goliath, 47 

Gospels, 10 

Gosse, Edmund (quoted), 1 

Government, 76, 77 

Grain, 16, 25, 46, 49, 101, 115, 
130-132, 1 39-141, I5 1 * J 53; see 
Wheat 

Grapes, n, 101, 156, 157, 164 

Grass, 26, 120, 163 

Grasshopper, n, 19, 137 

Graves, 104; see Tombs 

Grazing, 100, 10 1 

Greeks, 16, 27, 39, 46, 47, 66, 117, 
130, 167 

Guest, preparation for a, 164 

Guerrilla warfare, 17, 41 

Habakkuk, 138 

Haggai, 137 

Hall, G. Stanley (quoted), 1 

Hannibal, 67 

Harbor, 18, 20 

Harvest, 22 

Harvest Song, the Exmoor, 143 

Harvesting, 138, 139, I4i-i43> I S I 



[177] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 



Hauran, 14 

Heber, 59 

Hebrew genius, 1 19 

Hebrew history, 32, 38, 41 

Hebrew literature, 18, 48, 50, 60, 

119, 130, 142, 150, 155, 156, 

159, 161 
Hebrew proverb, 84 
Hebrew word, 59 
Hebrews, 13, 15, 18, 21, 37, 41, 

46, 47, 50, 56, 57, 66, 67, 69, 76, 

102, 107, in, 129, 130, 143, 

149, 167 
Hebron, 26, 53, 104, 157 
Heliopolis, 102 
Hermits, 105, no 
Hermon, Mount, 6, 71, 84-86, 88, 

97, 98, 120 
Herod, 15, 17, no 
Hezekiah, 15, 17 
High place, 36, 37, 39, 71 
Hills, 20, 21, 32-44, 47, 48, 53-55, 

58, 69, 71, 80, 100, 101, 104, 105, 

115, 116, 120, 129, 131, 139, 156, 

157, 163; see Mountains 
Hippopotamus, 117 
Hiram, 132 

History, 12-18, 43, 55, 56, 76, 
Hittites, 15 
Hollyhock, 10 

Holy Land, 75; see Palestine 
Homer, 32, 66 

Honey, 98, 101, 150, 164, 168 
Hood, Thomas (quoted), 149 
Horse, 42, 43, 58, 78, 139 
Hosea, 86, 89, 90, 119 
Hospitality, 168 
Houses, 5 
Huleh, Lake, 7, 10 
Humor, 50 
Hunting, 85 
Hyacinth, 54 
Hyena, n 
Hymn book, 34, 155, 156; Davidic 

collection in, 162 



Ideal Maiden, 75, 
Ideal Man, 121 
Imru'1-Kais, 80 
India, 10 



89 



Indians, 41, 56 

Industries, 156, 162; see Agricul- 
ture, Harvesting, Shepherds, 
Merchants, etc. 

Iphigenia, 39 

Irony, 92 

Isaac, 39, 163 

Isaiah, 42, 43, 67, 69, 87, 120-122, 
124, 129, 133, 140, 141, 156, 158, 
164, 166 

Ishmaelites, 28, 101 

Israel, 22, 41, 43, 55-58, 69, 70, 76, 

§9> 93> 94* 98» 99> I2I > I22 > I2 9> 
131, 141, 162, 163 
Israelites, 47, 56, 58-60, 69, 101, 
107, 131, 132, 152, 162 

Jabbok, 55, 100 

Jackal, n, 49, 166 

Jacob, 101, 107, 165 

Jael, 59 

Jaffa, 53 ; see Joppa 

Jebel-esh-Sheik, 85 

Jehovah, 18, 33, 34, 38, 69-71, 76, 
81, 98, 107, 132 ; see God 

Jeremiah, 99, 101, 129 

Jericho, 94, 102 

Jerome, Saint, 84 

Jerusalem, 15, 17, 18, 32, 33, 35, 
41, 42, 48, 67, 86, 88, 102, 104, 
107, no, 115, 121, 124, 129, 132, 
150, 157, 158, 168; New, 120 

Jesus, 53, 86, 150 

Jews, 17 ; see Hebrews 

Jezebel, 69, 78 

Jezreel, Valley of, 6 

Joan of Arc, 60 

Job, 42, 134 

Joel, 120 

Jonathan, no, 150, 153 

Joppa, 5, 17, 52, 53 

Jordan River, 7,8,14, 26, 53, 55-57, 
86, 92-96, 97, 100, 105, 152, 168 

Jordan Valley, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 20 

Joseph, 13, 25-30, 101 

Josephus, 102 

Joshua, 56; Book of, 97, 

Judas Maccabeus, 17, 41, 117 

Judea, mountains of, 12, 18, 19, 32, 
35, 41, 54, 101, 102, 120, 150, 157 



[178] 



GENERAL INDEX 



Judges, the, 48; Book of, 15 

Juniper, 85 

Justice, 118, 121, 159 

Kadesh, 17 

Kenite, Heber the, 59 
Kine of Bashan, 99 
Kishon, 54, 55-64 
Knights Templars, 17 

" Lady of the Lake, The " (quoted), 

57 
Laish, 48 

Lamb, Charles (quoted), 117 
Lament, David's, 153 
Land, of Heart's Desire, 76; of 

Promise, 131 
Landscape, 20 
Laundry, 104, 115 
Lava, 100 
Law, 49, 134; of hospitality, 168; 

of marriage, 149; of nature, 141 
Lebanon, 7, 11, 17, 48, 55, 80, 81, 

86, 87-90, 97, 120, 157, 166 
Lemuel, 129 
Leprosy, 93 
Lightning, 21, 70, 81 
Lily, 10, 52, 90 
Limestone, 104, 106 
Lion, 11, 43 
Literature, 22, 28, 60, 92, 104, 142, 

148, 153, 155, 156, 161 ; the Bible 

as, 1, 2, 18, 19, 20, 108, 156 
Lizard, 11 
Locusts, 120 

" Lorna Doone " (quoted), 142, 143 
Lot, 106 
Love, of God, 89, 151 ; prophet 

of, 119; faithful, 152 
Lowell, J. R. (quoted), 22 
Lydda, 14 
Lyric, 19, 35, 161, 169 

Maccabeus, 17, 41, 117 
Machpelah, 104 
Maid, 93 

Maiden, the Ideal, 75, 89 
Maidenhair fern, 10, 115, 116 
Man, the Ideal, 121; of Vengeance, 
158 



Map, mosaic, 3 

Markets, 25, 136, 159 

Markham, Edwin (quoted), 83 

Marsh, 7, 10 

Masts, 87 

Mecca, 102 

Mediterranean Sea, 5, 22, 46, 54, 

55, 75, 77 note, 80, 85 
Megiddo, 16 
Memphis, 25 
Menelaus, 66 
Merchants, 25, 67, 107, 134; see 

Traders 
Meroz, 57 
Micah, 129, 133 
Michmash, no, in, 113 
Midianites, 132, 139 
Mignonette, 10 
Milk, 98, 122, 163, 165; and honey, 

150 
Millet, 138 
Milton (quoted), 50 
Moab, king of, 163 ; Plateau of, 5. 

97, 104, 106, 152 
Moabitess, Ruth the, 152 
Mohammedans, 20 note 
Monastery, 76 
Mongols, 16 
Monks, 76 
Moonstroke, 35 
Moresheth, 129 
Moriah, Mount, 38, 39 
Moses, 69, 70, 106, 165 
Moslems, 16 
Mountains, 19, 35, ^6, 84, 97, 98, 

100, 104 ; see Hills 
Mu'allaka, 80 
Museum, British, 17; Semitic, at 

Harvard, 10 
Music, 21, 152, 161 
Mustard, 10 
Myrrh, 28, 101 
Myrtle, 100, 122 

Naaman, 92-96 
Naomi, 148, 152 
Napoleon I, 16 
Napoleon III, 17 
Narcissus, 10, 52 
National hymns, 35 



[!79] 



OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 



National ideals, 21, 141 

Nations, 18, 27 ; see Races 

Nature, 21, 77, 78, 90, 130; laws 
of, 141 ; lovers of, 80, 89, 130, 
161, 169; worship of, 68 

Nebuchadnezzar, 67 note 

Nile, 25 

Nineveh, 25 

Nomad, 13, 26, 68, 69 

Northern Kingdom, 69, 86, 129 

Numbers, Book of, 157 

Oak, 53, 75, 76, 100, 101 ; compar- 
ison of cedars with, 88 
Obadiah, 107 
Obelisk, 17 
Odyssey, 66 
Og, 104 
Oil, 101, 102 
Oleander, 100, 101 
Olive, n, 100 
Omri, 15 

Onomatopoeia, 22, 59 
Orange, 46, 53 
Oratory of the Bible, 1, 2 
Orchards, 71, 75, 101 
Orchids, 10, 54 
Orient, 20 ; see East 
Owl, 11 

Paintings, 117 

Palestine, agriculture in, 138-140, 
150-153; balm in, 97-103; caves 
of, 10, 1 04-1 18; contrasts of, 1 19; 
fences of, 133; flowers, birds, 
woods, and grain in, 52-54 ; 
grape raising in, 1 56, 1 57 ; jackals 
of, 49; mists of, 85, see Dew; 
physical geography of, 2-26; the 
Promised Land, 56, 131 ; scenery 
of, 5, 6 ; seasons of, 78 ; sheep 
raising in, 162-169; western side 

of, 75 
Palm, 11, 100, 129 
Pannag, 101 
Papyrus, 10 
Paradise, 120, 131 
Parched wheat, 153, 168 
Parthians, 16 
Partridge, 11 



Pasture, 26, 56, 152, 162, 165, 167 

Patriarchs, 162 

Peace of God, 89, 120 

Pears, 85 

Peasant, 26, 133, 136, 138, 156 

Persians, 16 

Petra, 26, 36, 107 

Pharaoh, 101 

Philistia, 18 

Philistine Plain, 46-52, 115 

Philistines, 41, 46-50, 56, m, 132 

Phoenicia, 66, 68 

Phoenicians, 13, 67, 88, 116, 117 

Physiography of Palestine, 19 

Pigeon, wild, 153 

Pilgrim Psalter, 35-38 

Pillars, of salt, 7; of Samaria, 15 

Pine, 90, 100 

Pisgah, Mount, 106 

Pit, 26 

"Place of Peace, The " (quoted), 83 

Plain, 46-53, 58, 66, 69, 70, 75, 76, 
97, 98, 1 02, 1 1 5 ; of Acre, 53, 66, 
67; of Esdraelon, 16, 54, 55; Mar- 
itime, 46 ; of Philistines, 52 ; of 
Sharon, 6, 52, 53, 66 

Plateau, 97, 106, 150, 162, 163 

Pliny, 88, 103 

Plowing, 15, 129, 139 

Plum, 85 

Poetry, American, 82; Arabian, 80; 
Babylonian, 68; of the Bible, 1,2, 
1 9, 67 note, 82, 1 24, 1 40, 1 4 1 , 1 43, 

i5°> I5 2 > !S5' i5 6 » x 59> 161, 169; 

characteristics of Hebrew, 161 
Poets, 19, 21, 59, 60, 75, 80, 82, 86, 

89,98,121, 130, 131, 149,159,169 
Political reasons, 94 
Politics, 76 
Pompey, 102 
Pools of Solomon, 150 

Poppy* 53 

Primitive setting of society, 14 
Primitive society, 13, 69, 104, 155 
Procession, triumphal, 102 
" Processional, The Grand," 34 
Promised Land, 56, 131 
Prophets, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22, 41, 69, 
76-78, 86, 93, 99, 119, 122, 124, 
129, 133, 134, I37 ? 138, 159 



[ISO] 



GENERAL INDEX 



Proverb, 84, 143 

Providence, 77, 85 

Pun, 50 

Purple, Tyrian and Sidonian, 67 

Quail, 10 

Rabbah, 168 

Races, 15, 16, 46, 67, 92, 130, 149, 

152, 167 ; see Nations 
Rachel, 165 
Rains, 19, 58, 71, 75-79, 120 137, 

138, 139, 151, 157 
Raven, 10, 70, 101 
Red Sea, 107 
Refuge, city of, 168 
Religion, 18, 20, 39, 67, 69, 70, 76, 

132, 142, 161, 162, 167 
Reuben, 28 
Reubenites, 57 
Rhinoceros, 117 
Rhyme, 143 
Rhythm, 21, 152, 155 
Riddle, 50 
Rimmon, 95 
Rivers, 55, 93, 100 
Roads, 13, 16, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 

41, 121, 124, 129 
Robbers, 17, 98, 105, 107 
Robin, 1 1 
Rocks, 18, 22, 36, 53, 68, 98, 105, 

106, 107, no, 115, 118, 121, 139, 

150. J 57 
Roman baths, 15 
Romans, 16, 27, 46, 47 
Rome, 102 
Rose, 10, 52, 120 
Ruth, 14, 139, i45- I 54 

Sacrifice, 38, 39, 163, 164 

Salt, pillars of, 7 

Samaria, city of, 1 5, 94, 1 29 ; land 

of, 18, 41, 55, 71 
Samson, 46-52, 132 
Samson Country, 48, 52, 104 
Samuel, 70, 113 
Sanctuary, 71 
Sarcasm, 70, 92 
Satire, 92 
Saul, 47, 104, 108, 1 10, 1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 62 



Scenery of Palestine, 5, 6 

Scotch, 27, 57, 66 

Scott, Sir Walter (quoted), 57 

Scythians, 16 

Seasons, 78 

Semites, 37, 46, 67 

Semitic Museum, 10 

Sennacherib, 17, 22 

Shade of the cedars, 87 

Shakespeare, 159 

Sharon, Plain of, 6, 53, 66, 71; rose 

of, 52 
Sheba, Queen of, 102 
Sheep, n, 57, 99, 101, 124, 130, 

162-169; see Flocks 
Sheep pens, 104, 166 
Sheepshearing, 165 
Shephelah, 104, 115 
Shepherd, 19,101,124,129,161-169 
Shrubs, 85, 100 
Shunammite, 76, 93 
Sidon, 66 

Sidonian purple, 67 
Sirocco, 77 
Sisera, 58-60 
Sit-Ikwitha, 14 
Slavery, 56, 131 
Slaves, 28 

Smith, G. A. (quoted), 90 
Snake, n 

Snow, 19, 84-86, 98 
Social message, 90 
Society, primitive, 13,69, 104, 155 
Sodom, 106 
Soil, 100, 157 
Solomon, 67, 88, 102, 132, 133, 150. 

151, 163, 169 
Songs, 155, 156; Love Song of the 

Vineyard, 159 
South, the, 25 
Sparrow, n 
Spelt, 141 note 
Spicery, 28, 101 
Spirits, 68 
Spirituality, 76 

Spring, 106, 115, 1 50, 165 ; see Well 
Steppes, 85 
Stork, n 
Storm, 19, 21, 49, 77, 78, 80-83, 

120; volcanic, 106 



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OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES 



Story, 19, 25, 27, 39, 48, 50, 69, 92, 
93, 108, no, 145, 148, 149, 150, 

l S 2 

Story-telling, 2, 27, 148 
Strabo, 103 
Summer, 78, 84, 85 
Sunstroke, 35 
Swallow, 1 1 
Sycamore, 129 

Symbol, 71, 76, 163, 167; see Fig- 
ures of speech 
Syria, 84, 94 
Syrians, 17,93, 95> 97 

Tabernacles, Feast of, 132 note 

Tabor, Mount, 58, 113 

Tacitus, 103 

Tekoa, 69, 129 

Temperature, 5 ; see Climate 

Templars, 17 

Temple, of Apollo, 88 ; of Diana, 
88; of Gaza, 50; of Jerusalem, 
88, 103, 132 ; of Ur, 68 

Tennyson (quoted), 70 

Thebes, 25 

Threshing, 140, 141 

Threshing floor, 15, 22, 139 

Thunder, 21 

Thunderstorm, 80-83 

Thutmose III, 16, 17, 131 

Tiglath-pileser, 67 note 

Timnah, 48 

Tishbite, Elijah the, 66, 69 

Tithes, 140 

Titus, 102 

Tombs, 116, 117 ; see Graves 

Traders, 25; see Merchants 

Tragacanth, 85 

Translations, 156; see Preface for 
translations used in text 

Trees, 5, 6, 68, 82, 89, 90, 101-103, 
120,122; apricot, n; cedar, 81, 
87-91 ; cherry, 85 ; fig, 1 1 ; fir, 1 1 , 
122; myrtle, 122; olive, n; palm, 
n ; pear, 85; pine, 100; plum, 85 

Tribute, 26, 163 

Troglodytes, 104, 105 

Turks, 16 



Tyre, 66, 67, 69, 132 
Tyrian purple, 67 

Ur, 66, 68 
Utica, 88 

Van Dyke, Henry (quoted), 161 
Vengeance, Man of, 158 
Vermont, comparison of Palestine 

with, 5, n, 85 
Versions of the Bible, 156, 161 ; see 

P)~eface for versions used in text 
Vine, 90, 130, 131 
Vinedresser, 19 

Vineyards, 71, 75, 77, 85, 155-160 
Virgil, 67 
Visions, 76 
Volcanoes, 97, 100, 106 

Wages, "j j 
Water rights, 14 
Water-sellers, call of, 122 
Weather, 77 ; see Summer, Winter, 

Climate, etc. 
Well, 14, 15, 27 ; see Spring 
Wheat, 46, 71, 75, 77, 100, 101, 

IS 1 *^ 2 * 134. 138, 15°' l S*> T 53> 

168 ; see Grain 
Wilderness, 69, 108, 119, 120, 150 
Winds, 19, 77, 78, 80, 82, 120, 130 
Wine, 122 
Wine vat, 158 
Winter, 78, 84 
Winter rains, 58, 78 
Witch of Endor, 113 
Wolves, 85 
Wool, 163 
Worship, 33, 37, 67-70, 80-82,95, 

i55> 163 
Writing, 10 

Yarmuk, 55, 100 

Zephaniah, 129 

Zion, Mount, 5, 32, 35, 37, 43, 69 

Zoar, 106 

Zophar, 136 

Zorah, 48 



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